Seven Days of Falling
by RevealItAll
Summary: Embarking on an unexpected journey to silence the remnants of her broken past, Mukuro struggles with her heart and threatens to sacrifice a future that could pull her out of the darkness.
1. Into the Void

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter one  
>"Into The Void"<em><br>_

* * *

><p>Today had started out normally.<p>

She had verified the patrol shift with Kirin and went along. There hadn't been any humans seen yet, and the bored demons in the group chattered amongst themselves as usual, and as usual, she paid them no mind.

Mukuro's thoughts had slowly drifted to other things in her own boredom—and, inevitably, the thing she had the most to ponder about: Hiei.

It had been a while since their last fight and neither of them had spoken much about it. It was almost as if they had an understanding, a silent agreement, where they put forth more effort to be civil to one another. "Civil" being the highest treatment they ever gave to _anyone_, which would by any normal standards be "nice" and "gracious."

Mukuro could sense that Hiei was uncomfortable with it, and if she was being honest with herself, she was uncomfortable, too. She had never trusted anyone to so much as stand anywhere near her _door_ at night, and she always let Hiei into her room, and once when he was injured, into her bed to rest. This was because she knew him better than she knew anyone—perhaps _too_ well—but still, it was so incredibly difficult to adjust to such a thing. If he even so much as moved while she slept, her instincts jumped in a flurry, her mind leaping to images of someone coming to harm her while she was vulnerable, until her mind and senses returned to the present.

Neither of them knew best how to react to their situation, because they had never trained themselves for it. Never once had they woken up and expected to be happy that day, or expected something good to happen. Never had they prepared themselves for the best, rather than the worst. And now that they had been thrust into that likelihood, they stared confusedly into their hands, fumbling with the reins to such a beast.

"—heard one of them looked like Lord Mukuro, but that's just—" someone muttered, but she ignored it. She didn't care if anyone looked like her. She saw herself more than enough.

"—slaves escaped, and they're tracking them down—"

Mukuro's train of thought was shattered in an instant when that word pierced through. She turned suddenly toward the apparition that had spoken it, and she would have grabbed his shirt, had he been wearing one. "What?" she growled.

He was obviously baffled. "I-in area 6-F, some . . . slaves escaped. From a, a dealer, I guess," he answered.

Area 6-F. Mukuro knew that place, and the first time she had been there was so very long ago.

Mukuro's mind pieced the information together all too rapidly.

"Where did you hear this from?" she demanded.

"Someone else back at the fortress. . . ."

She flew back in a hurry, commanding every apparition to tell her about the slave trade's latest news. Most of them had nothing to say, but finally one of them confirmed what the other one had said, and then another.

Mukuro had made up her mind. She was leaving, and she was leaving now.

And just minutes later, as she walked purposefully toward the South-East exit, Hiei had positioned himself directly in her path.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked pointedly.

"Leaving." Her face was stony and her tone simmered with anger. She did nothing to further acknowledge his presence, merely adjusting her path a foot to the right and walking straight past him. "Look after things here while I'm away."

And just like that, she was gone.

—.—

Mukuro had already traveled halfway through the forest before she realized he was following her.

It must have been in the haze of her confused feelings that she had barely even noticed him to begin with. Her mind was miles away, mired in blackness and possibilities.

She almost blew up on him, but she stopped herself. He wasn't a stranger to her life, to her past. Mukuro certainly had not invited him, but she couldn't simply turn him away either. He was the only one with any ounce of understanding.

"You have a habit of disobeying me," she croaked, his presence shoving a cold sliver of ice into her burning emotions.

Hiei leaped to the next branch, not missing a beat. "And you have a habit of being completely irrational," he said. "Clearly, you require my supervision far more than the fortress does."

"_I_ don't require _anything_ of you," she hissed, every fiber of her self-control working to keep her reactions focused on words rather than violence. All she could hope was that he would keep his mouth shut long enough for her restraint to return to some semblance of normalcy.

This was _her_ venture.

And he blatantly refused to let her go on her own.

But she didn't have time to focus on what she felt for this man. Everything was too jagged, too hazy. This world she was seeing was one he didn't seem to fit into. That sliver melted, encased in the heat of her memories.

Mukuro continued moving forward.

"You aren't thinking clearly," he said, leaping to another branch. "You ought to turn back. Surely you realize this is pointless."

Mukuro rounded on him, her gaze burning holes into the tree he stood in. "Don't you dare tell me _my_ search is pointless," she snapped, the anger in her eyes reflecting her memory of his own life's pursuits. This seemed to quiet him, and he only gave a muffled grunt in response.

She couldn't handle this. Him, and _this_. Not now.

She couldn't. She had to focus. Move forward.

Forget him and his nature, just for a while.

Otherwise she'd break.

—.—

They traveled for hours in tense silence, passing through trees and over hills, forests blending into grasslands blending into forests blending into mountains. As night began to fall, Mukuro knew they were getting closer. The trees here were thickening, making travel increasingly difficult. She only had her sense of direction to go by, her memory . . . memory that she cursed for having to begin with.

Something moving in the cover of the trees caught her attention. Mukuro increased her pace and closed in on the creature—it was a demon, appearing to be searching for something in the forest.

Mukuro felt her anger rise like bile in her throat. "You," she started, a hint of venom in her voice, then she softened, "tell me where the Plains of Shadow are." He would certainly have a clearer direction than she would, though she had only just caught herself from saying 'slave ring.' She would need to keep her mouth in check.

The creature had its back to them and something told her that it had not heard their approach, yet when it turned to face them, the expression on his weathered, ogre-like face was one of cold control. "You have interrupted me," he said, in the dull, matter-of-fact sort of tone one might use to describe the state of the weather.

"Tell me where the Plains of Shadow are," Mukuro repeated levelly, "So that my companion and I won't be an interruption to you anymore."

The demon stared at her expressionlessly. Then it said, "I have been interrupted."

Mukuro's flesh hand clenched into a fist. Her more diplomatic nature was escaping her, her emotions betraying her coolly calculated strategies.

That couldn't happen, not if she was going to make it through. She had escaped the first time of their own will. Finding what she was looking for and doing what she intended against their will would be harder.

Much harder.

* * *

><p>Standing a few feet behind and to the left of Mukuro, Hiei saw her body tense and felt her inevitable surge in power, signifying her growing impatience and rage. Aiming to end this interrogation swiftly, Hiei darted in front of her and began a slow walk toward the creature, purposefully sliding his sword from its sheath as he drew closer.<p>

"Answer her question," he spat. "And do it in the next five seconds, or I will have the pleasure of ridding the world of one more fool."

The demon tilted its head awkwardly to one side. "You are an interruption," it said.

Hiei bared his teeth in what he hoped was a menacing growl. "Do you want me to show you what a _real_ interruption feels like?" he asked in a low, dangerous voice.

Then the demon said, "An interruption has occurred."

And just like that, Hiei's patience snapped.

In one quick motion, he jerked the entirety of his sword from his sheath and sliced the demon completely through. There was a moment in which Hiei's eyes widened as he was able to see its insides.

"Hn?" he grunted in confusion.

Then there was simply light, fire, and noise.

For an indeterminable period of time, Hiei felt nothing. He could not even see, though he was certain his eyes were open. He groaned, but the white fog shrouding his vision refused to leave. Lying on his back, sprawled awkwardly against something which was definitely not a tree, he grasped blindly around him to confirm his surroundings, and when his fingers clutched at what felt like fabric, his confused mind tripped over its own warbled thoughts as it desperately tried to decipher the stimuli.

Then, Mukuro's voice cut through the fog of anxiety:

"Damn it," she cursed. "I should have _known_."

Hiei relaxed and let out a sigh, blinking repeatedly in an attempt to abolish the floating dots of color that danced in front of his eyes. He looked vaguely down and realized that the fabric currently bunched into his fist was in fact Mukuro's pant leg, and that her arms were wrapped firmly around his midsection. The explosion had disintegrated most of the front of his cloak, revealing the singed and shredded undershirt beneath, and even the material of it was torn and burnt. Mukuro's hands and sleeves were stained in red, and it took Hiei a moment to realize that it was his own blood.

He groaned. "What _was_ that thing?"

"A robot," she breathed. "Things like that . . . are more common around here."

He shifted slightly in her embrace, and the movement caused a horrible, searing pain to flood his formerly numb body. Hiei gasped and lurched foward, his hands releasing their hold on Mukuro's clothing to clutch aimlessly at his own person, where his nerves burned at multiple points of contact. He squeezed his thigh in an effort to stop the pain in his leg, though it only made the sensations more unbearable, and he had to grit his teeth to keep from crying out in agony.

His hands flew to the pain of arms wrapped around him. He tugged urgently at the sleeves of Mukuro's shirt, uncertain as to whether her touch was worsening the pain or not, but too stunned to make a proper decision on the matter. "Dammit!" he snarled, for the splotches of color still refused to stop obstructing his vision and were now moving even more wildly in front of his eyes.

"We should stop," she said suddenly, and he was too disoriented to argue.

She maneuvered herself away from him, every movement she—and consequently he—made causing the pain to worsen. "I'll look around," she said.

Returning a short time later, she helped him to his feet and supported his weight as they moved, despite his protests. With every step, Hiei tried to will the pain away, though it was proving ineffective. He had experienced much more excruciating pain in his life, and he had dealt with it in silence before. His pride would not permit him to show any sign of weakness now. The thought of being unfit to travel on because of some silly hunk of exploding metal made him sick. Showing vulnerability to Mukuro was infinitely less frightening than being a burden to her.

He had meant to aid her, not slow her down.

But Hiei feared that if his right leg was causing him this much pain now—as he limped beside Mukuro on his left—a full night's rest would not be sufficient to heal it completely.

Mukuro guided him to a small clearing and eased him to the forest floor. As the darkness of night enveloped the forest, temperatures began to drop rapidly. They established a fire, and the warmth helped Hiei to focus. He defensively pushed Mukuro away each time she attempted to help tend to his injuries, wary of trusting her with the problem when he could not seem to solve it himself.

He salvaged the remainder of his cloak and used strips of the material to wrap his wounded leg, where the blood was seeping heavily through his pants and dripping onto the ground beneath him.

There was a rustle nearby, what sounded like the flapping of wings—probably a only a bird. Still, Hiei instinctively grabbed at his hip, his stomach dropping unpleasantly when he did not find his weapon there.

"My sword," he said suddenly, looking over at Mukuro. "I need it."

She nodded once and left the clearing. While she was gone, he tried and failed quite miserably to remove his shirt and attend to the large hole blown into his gut. The sensitivity of his raw skin made the task difficult, and by the time he heard Mukuro's returning footsteps, he was lying on his back next to the small collection of metal he'd removed from his skin, halfway extricated from his shirt, his arms thrown above his head, and his eyes closed in exhaustion and momentary defeat.

* * *

><p>Mukuro dropped Hiei his sword, expecting to be able to relax for a while when he asked her, "What do you intend to do when you find them?"<p>

The question made her stop and think. What _did_ she intend to do? She hadn't been entirely sure. With this, she had let her instincts carry her, and hadn't stopped to plan out her moves. It was completely stupid. But she came here on a rumor, a hunch, and she couldn't let it go.

She could at least stop it, even if she didn't find what she was looking for.

"I'm gonna end them," she answered. The dark, simmering part of her resolved that things would go her way and nothing would stop her—no mercy, no remorse.

This wound that had so delicately started to heal was fraying at the edges and spilling out, two parts of herself battling for dominance. Mukuro didn't want Hiei to know her this way, but now, this was the only way she could be. Until it was over.

Mukuro sat next to him, batting away his objections as she began to aide him in removing his shirt and tending to his wounds.

Time passed until the two of them were finally settled to rest in their makeshift camp, as comfortably close to the fire as they could be, and as bearably close to each other as they would allow for the sharing of warmth.

Mukuro had barely claimed sleep when she sensed something coming for them.

"Hell," she muttered, frustration bubbling her momentarily suppressed rage back to the surface.

A group of demons came into sight, darting between the trees toward them. Mukuro stood and took a stance slightly in front of Hiei, waiting for an ideal moment, and leaped out, punching one with her left hand. She had to know for sure what she was dealing with.

It flew into the trees a slight distance away, snapping limbs and tearing tree bark with metal screeches and clatters.

They were _all_ mechanical. All of them.

Mukuro took a split second to assess their numbers and turned back to Hiei. They were already beginning to surround them, and Mukuro grit her teeth. The most efficient way to kill them would be to explode them into each other, but how could that be done reasonably safely, and without further injury?

Mukuro grabbed a robot and slung it into the trees again, determined to keep them away, to possibly discover a weakness. The trees weren't enough to pierce the metal, and retreat was most certainly the safest option, but Hiei was in no condition to escape on his own. She had to take him with her, and as the robots swarmed, the chances of that were slimming.

"Mukuro, we're leaving!" she heard him bark at her, and was grateful they were on the same page. He took off ahead of her and she followed, glancing behind her at their pursuers. The blanket of darkness was not easy to see through, but she could tell that they were losing them.

Then she heard the sound of objects whizzing through the air. Spear-like limbs began to fall around them, shattering as they hit the earth, wooden splinters spraying. Then, an awkward thud and subsequent cry as her partner had not been able to dodge in time.

"Hiei!" she shrieked, unable to go back in time to stop the swarm of robots that now surrounded him. She tried grabbing them and slinging them off again, but they grabbed her back, and it became more and more difficult to prize herself away.

She couldn't destroy them. If she did, she'd likely kill them both.

"Hiei!" she screamed again, hoping, _needing_ him to escape them. All she could do now was get away, and hope.

But when they eventually cleared away, and Mukuro scaled the woods, there was no sign of Hiei.

There was nothing.

He was gone.


	2. In the Dark

**Seven Days of Falling**

chapter two**  
><strong>"In The Dark"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The thick bars at the front of his cell were rusted and cold to the touch. He curled his fingers around them, peering out into the darkness ahead.<p>

The pathway separating his cell from the line of cells across from him remained silent except for the occasional cough or rustle of clothing.

It was difficult to make out any details. At first, he had suspected the cells immediately surrounding him were unoccupied, but now, having sat at the same spot since waking up an hour previously, he knew without a doubt that there was someone in the cell across from him.

He called out through the bars, but heard nothing except the echo of his own words through the shadows, and the noise both comforted and confused him.

It was obviously his voice, but he could not remember ever having heard it before today.

He rested his head on the bars, closing his eyes in thought. He wished that he could remember why he was here. Every time he tried to recall, he felt a promising tingle at the edges of his mind, but that feeling never led to any great epiphany no matter how long or hard he focused on it.

He wanted to know why he was covered in blood and why the pain in his stomach and leg refused to leave. His knuckles were raw and his hands bruised, and blood stained the inside of his palm where his fingernails had punctured the skin. He couldn't remember having gotten in a fight, yet the condition of his hands and the soreness of his arms suggested he had been trying—quite violently—to punch something. It was a ridiculous thought because he was certain he had never gotten into a brawl with anything his life, yet his body ached in multiple places, and the dried blood where his skin had ruptured was scabbing up in a way that made it painful to move.

It felt like something—or multiple somethings—had purposely tried to hurt him. This seemed the most likely explanation, for he couldn't imagine ever wanting to inflict this sort of pain on himself. But aside from images of the metal bars on which he was leaning and the small stone room he resided in, his mind remained frustratingly blank.

Maybe he had been trying to defend himself, and, having not ever resorted to violence before, had been overcome by the enemy.

But why had they brought him here? Why had they wanted to hurt him?

He lifted his head again. "I know that you're there," he said to the darkened cell across from him. "Whoever you are." His voice cracked on the last word, and he stopped to run his tongue over his chapped lips, tasting blood there. He swallowed thickly, his throat stinging from thirst.

He did not know what else to do but wait.

—.—

Nothing could compare to the relief he felt when the bars of his cell slid open. He was so relieved that he overcame the pain in his legs in order to stand, but as soon as he stepped outside the cell, he was grabbed roughly by the arms, any further progress he might have made halted by two demons holding onto him.

"Why am I here?" he asked. "What is this place?" He peered up at the demons alternatively, expecting an answer, but none came. Their faces were a pale, sickening green, their brows heavy, and their mouths set into straight lines as they slammed the now-empty cell shut and proceeded down the dark corridor, subsequently taking him as well.

"Please," he said, as they pulled him along by the arms. "I don't remember anything, I need you to explain what's happening." The vertical state of his body was causing blood the rush to his unhealed wound. He resorted to hopping awkwardly on one foot, which wouldn't have been difficult, except these demons were taller than him and thus taking bigger steps than he was. In his efforts to keep up pace, he stumbled again and again until he finally fell, slipping out of their hold and falling to the floor. He landed on all fours, crying out at the shock of the impact on his hurt leg.

He wasn't given a chance to catch his breath before being torn from the ground by a solid arm around his torso. He scrambled aimlessly in the hold of the demon who had grabbed him, hissing in pain as the pressure on the gash in his stomach increased. "Stop!" he gasped, struggling more vigorously as they neared the end of the corridor. "Put me down!"

They came to a halt at a massive door, and as the other demon moved to unbolt it, all protests were drowned out by the horrendous creaking of the metal hinges as they opened, and whatever pain he was experiencing was quickly tempered by apprehension and curiosity when the demons stepped through to the other side.

—.—

"Drink this."

The woman thrust a plain cup of clear liquid into his hands before turning away again to attend to a table against the wall. Atop the wooden surface sat a collection of vials and flasks of varying sizes and contents, none of which he could make out specifically.

He peered curiously into the cup in his hands. "What is this?" he asked.

"Water."

Maybe if the circumstances had been different, he wouldn't have trusted her answer. But in his current state of dehydration, he was desperate enough to trust the word of just about anyone, and without further hesitation, he eagerly gulped down the liquid, carefully licking the last drops of moisture from his lips when he had finished, taking a moment to observe his surroundings.

They were in a small room—"they" being the woman, himself, and the two demon guards who had carried him there. Like the tiny cell he had come from, this place was cold and gray, being made entirely of stone. But unlike his cell, it actually had furniture—the table, some old wooden chairs, and a cot, which he was currently sitting on.

The woman was walking back toward him again, and he held out the empty cup to her. "I want more," he said.

"You can't have more right now."

"Why not?"

"I have to tend to your wounds."

The woman's hair was thick, ginger, and reached mid-way down her chest, standing out against the dark material of her kimono. Her skin was pale and she was hardly any taller or larger than he was, though for some reason the lunkish guards seemed to respect her. Her expression was solemn, her eyes downcast as she began unwinding the black fabric which was wrapped around his wounded stomach. Large amounts of blood had dried there, sealing the fabric to his skin so that removal was tedious and painful. After much protest and complaint on his part, she finally managed to tear off the last shred of material and set about wiping away the excess blood with a damp cloth.

"What happened to me?" he asked her.

Her face was stern and unreadable. "I don't know," she said, not unkindly.

"But how did I get here?"

His query was met with silence.

She opened a mysterious jar and dipped her hand into it, immersing her fingers in a thick creamy substance, which she then proceeded smear over the red, raw flesh that stretched from the bottom of his ribcage to below his navel. He hissed at the burning sensation that followed, digging his fingers into the thin white lining of the cot.

"Those jewels around your neck," she said, her voice taking his mind off of the physical pain. "They're quite beautiful."

He looked down at the pair of luminescent gems which hung on thin cords around his neck. They looked expensive, and he wondered how he had acquired them.

"I wish I could remember something about myself," he said.

"You don't have to worry about that," the woman replied. "Here, that doesn't matter."

"What doesn't matter?"

"Anything. Everything."

"Where is 'here'?"

"A place with other people like you."

"You mean people who can't remember who they are? Can you not remember who you are either? Is that why you're here?"

She looked directly at his face, and for a split second her eyes thinned in a way that told him she didn't appreciate that question at all, but any semblance of irritation was quickly purged and her expression neutralized. She took the cup from his hand, walked with it back to the table of flasks, and returned it to him a moment later, full to the top.

Too elated at having been given more water, he did not press her on the last question and, instead, began to drink.

"The concept of living here is very simple," said the woman as she set about tearing the fabric stuck to his wounded leg. "Do your job without complaint and you will receive one meal a day and a place to sleep." She paused after tearing the top of his pant leg free from the clotted blood. "You won't be needing these," she announced, pulling off each of his boots in turn and letting them fall to the floor. She then removed his entire pant leg from the thigh down and tossed it to the side.

Throughout this process, he couldn't completely abandon the feeling that something about this entire situation was awry, but his mind was cloudy and refused to consider the problem any further than the fact that there was one. An almost sleep-inducing feeling of relaxation was beginning to overtake him, making the promise of a place to sleep incredibly alluring.

He set the again-empty cup aside. "What is my job?" he asked.

"To do what you're told."

She smeared more of the creamy substance onto his wounded thigh, but this time he didn't feel like putting in the effort of protesting. He merely grimaced at the subsequent stinging sensation and considered her words as carefully as he could.

It was simple, so simple that he was sure it couldn't be right. And yet . . . the point didn't seem worth arguing. In his state of identity confusion, the simplicity of this woman's rules was comforting, for it meant that his lack of self-understanding gave him no reason to panic.

Do what he was told.

Yes, he thought. That seemed reasonable enough.


	3. Sun Doesn't Rise

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter three**  
><strong>"Sun Doesn't Rise"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Mukuro hadn't eaten in two days.<p>

It was irresponsible and foolish, but she didn't seem to notice. Her hunger was mainly an invisible factor in light of all that she was facing. The days were hot and the nights were cold but she felt nothing but the torment inside of her.

Mukuro had searched and scoured the terrain for signs of him, signs of anything. It was this voyage she decided to haphazardly make that had done this to him, and when before it seemed so damn important, she now hated herself for starting it. How could she not have known that something like this could happen? She risked the loss of the one man, the one person, that she valued more than anything.

More than even the pain of her past, or the possibility of ending it for others like her.

She cursed herself for not _making_ him stay at the fortress. Why didn't she realize? Why didn't she forget the desire for his company and choose the desire for his safety above all?

She could taste his scent, sharp and creamy spices; she could feel his warmth against her back, or his fist pounding against her body; she could find him when she closed her eyes to sleep.

Mukuro cursed herself because she was not yet willing to face the thought of going on without him.

The forest was gone now, and the terrain had begun to turn into valleys. She felt that she was getting close. She paused to stare at the sky, the glaring orange and red, and looked back down at the grass. There was something black in the distance that she hadn't noticed before.

Mukuro sped up her pace and paused, leaning down to pick it up.

It was Hiei's sword.

After finding that, Mukuro was sure she was getting somewhere. She blew through the area, searching for anything she could find—which turned up to only be more robot parts and tatters of Hiei's clothes.

He had fought them here, and inevitably lost. They had him, somewhere, and she was going to find out where, no matter how long it took.

Mukuro had so far run across three demons, one of which turned out to be passing through, the other two engineers residing their quaintly chosen areas of the Plains. She interrogated, threatened, searched, and even injured, but came away none the wiser on either the robots or Hiei's whereabouts. It seemed that no one around this area had anything to do with what had happened.

Mukuro's temptation to blow the entire plains into oblivion was becoming difficult to keep in check.

It had been three days now, and Mukuro had to force herself to eat and sleep—the former being the most difficult because it seemed in her current mood it was even more difficult to keep anything down. She was hungry and tired and extremely pissed off—but more than that, with every day that passed, she was increasingly bereft.

The loss of him was the loss of the only goodness she had salvaged inside of herself, and the darkness was pooling inside of her, threatening to overtake her.

She couldn't _not_ find him. He was her only hope, her only lifeline, back into the light.

—.—

Night was beginning to fall now—undoubtedly it would be another cold one. After tonight, it would be four days since she had lost Hiei.

Yes, only lost. He wasn't gone. He couldn't be.

After the little sleep she had gotten in the wake of everything she'd done so far, Mukuro was exhausted, and sense was beginning to return. She had to rest, or forsake finding him because she was too weak.

It was when she closed her eyes that she sensed someone coming toward her.

Mukuro stood up, preparing herself. Whatever it was was relatively weak, and so she doubted it would bother her, but she wouldn't let it have any opportunities.

A female demon stumbled into sight over the crest of a hill, her light-brown hair entangled with leaves and twigs. Her clothing was in tatters, but the material was a deep, silky purple, and must have been beautiful at one time. As soon as she spotted Mukuro, her wild eyes grew to the size of saucers and she took off in another direction. Apparently she hadn't been in her right mind to even sense Mukuro's energy.

Mukuro couldn't simply let her go, and darted after her, grabbing one of the girl's wrists. She simply shrieked and growled like a feral cat, flailing and clawing vainly at the metal of Mukuro's mechanical arm. "What're you running from?" Mukuro asked simply, and the girl stopped thrashing for a moment and shot her an incredulous look, but said nothing.

"Are you one of the escaped slaves?" Mukuro questioned. Again the girl said nothing, but this time resumed her struggle. Mukuro raised her arm over her head, and the captured girl's eyes began to well with tears. "I just want answers, damn it, I want to know if you've seen the robots. Where did they come from?"

Finally the girl stopped wriggling enough to stare into Mukuro's eyes, as if deciding whether or not the answers were worth giving, her chest heaving like she was struggling for air. "Yes," she panted. "I escaped. Where the hell am I?"

"The Plains of Shadow," Mukuro answered. "Tell me about the robots."

"Please!" the girl pleaded. "I need to know where to go—before they find me and take me back to her!"

"Answer me first, have you seen the robots?"

The demon girl's lip quivered. "I-I dunno what you mean. I haven't . . . run into anyone, but you."

Mukuro dropped her wrist, and the demon girl rubbed it vigorously.

"I'd go that way," Mukuro said, gesturing to the northeast.

The girl stared at her for a moment, and Mukuro watched her expectantly. "Well?"

"Can I . . ." the girl began, and Mukuro raised her eyebrow. The girl cleared her throat. "Can I stay with you, just for tonight? Until the morning?"

Mukuro considered this. She wasn't normally one to take pity. But this was not something she could simply brush away.

"Yes," she answered, then turned around and began to walk back to where she planned on sleeping.


	4. The Clouds Marched

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter four**  
><strong>"The Clouds Marched"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>For what seemed like an eternity, his life consisted of long periods of silence and isolation, broken apart by short visits to the woman in that small room.<p>

The cups of water became a regularity, and each time they met, she would touch his cheek with the back of her hand, causing him to move his head away when the contact inevitably lasted too long for his comfort. She made comments about his body temperature, obviously irked about something which he did not understand.

She asked him "why?" about things he did not know the answers to, and after several meetings with her, he began to wonder if her questions were merely rhetorical—if she did not actually expect him to respond.

But however odd the woman's behavior was, he found himself looking forward to her company. Besides the guards, she was the only creature he held a clear image of in his mind, and after the long stretches of isolation in his cell, her companionship was welcome. Sometimes it was all he thought about. He spent lengths of time fantasizing about what the next visit would be like, imagining the feeling of her chilly hand against his cheek and wondering if their next meeting would be different somehow.

It never was.

Sometimes he was so thirsty, he could almost imagine, explicitly, the feeling of the water in his mouth, and occasionally it was convincing enough to help him fall asleep. Some part of him wondered at whether water should have tasted so sweet, but he quickly dismissed the concern. His desire to drink was far too great to be disturbed by such doubts.

When he wasn't thinking about his own bodily needs or the strange woman, he spent his time staring at the gems around his neck. The woman continued to take an interest in them, though she rarely spoke, only stared at them, a seemingly captivated glow in her eyes. Her preoccupation with the stones made him wonder more and more where they had come from, and more importantly, who he was.

One day, when he asked her about his forgotten identity, she told him that his name was Kouta. When he asked her what he should call her, she answered simply, "Masuyo."

—.—

As Kouta lay awake in his cell, he gingerly touched the stones resting just below his collarbone. Taking great care, he lifted one of the jewels up by its cord to examine it in the sparse light. For a time, he stared at the distorted reflection in the pearly surface, but nothing about the tiny face staring back at him seemed recognizable.

It frustrated him—he was certain that he had once put these stones on with their direct significance in mind, but now, he could not even remember where he had gotten them, much less what they meant.

Masuyo had told him that they were very beautiful, and they were—their pure glow was perhaps the only source of beauty within the entire cell.

Next to him sat a chipped bowl which had been given to him ten minutes previously by the guards. It had held a portion of thick, tasteless gruel, which he had finished off in a matter of minutes, and had left him unsatisfied.

There was nothing else in the cell to eat, and right now he was not sure if he could fall asleep in the midst of his stomach's incessant complaints.

A sudden sneeze nearby made him flinch.

Crawling to the edge of his cell, Kouta squinted across to the bars across from him, hoping to see some sign of movement through the shadows.

Another sneeze.

"I hear you." He almost said more, but his voice caught in his throat when, a moment later, he saw a small pair of eyes blink back at him through the darkness.

"Who are you?" Kouta asked, but before the words had left his lips, the eyes had disappeared again, and he was left to stare, confused, into the shadows once more.

But he knew the shadows weren't empty now. There was something—_someone_ there.

Kouta sat back on his bare feet, tilting his head sideways in hopes that doing so would allow him to catch another glimpse of movement.

The familiar sound of stone grinding against stone resonating down the hall, and he visibly flinched at the intrusion, then leaned forward with sudden eagerness. That sound meant that the door was opening, which meant that either the guards were bringing him food or they were taking him to see Masuyo.

He listened to the footsteps as they grew louder and louder, and when they finally stopped, he was staring up at an intimidatingly large ogre-like creature.

His cell was opened and Kouta was ordered to stand and to walk. The stone floor felt cold and dusty beneath his bare feet, and every time he turned around or paused in his steps, he was shoved roughly from behind and told to keep moving forward. He wanted to know if he was being taken to more food, but his questions received no response as the demon accompanying him remained frustratingly silent.

After passing through several doorways and halls, they finally reached a circular room with a low ceiling. Several boys and girls were lined against the wall, and he was told to stand with them and to be quiet. He did as he was told, and within the next few minutes, more girls filed into the room until finally the group of them spanned half the length of the wall. As he looked to either side, he saw that the young demons standing around him held expressions ranging from confusion to nervous apprehension, and when Masuyo walked into the room, several of them edged backwards as though stricken by fear.

He frowned slightly, not understanding the behavior, but deciding that it did not matter because he knew there was no reason to fear this woman. Perhaps she was going to going to feed them all. Then they would understand.

Entering the room as well was a tall man with sharp features and thinning hair. He had a harsh expression, and he said something to Masuyo as they approached, and all she said back was, "All of these came in this week."

The man said something else but it was hardly audible. The woman instructed Kouta and the others to form a straight line, and, starting at one end, the man proceeded to make his way down it, pausing every so often at the boy or girl in front of him and muttering something under his breath.


	5. The Good That Won't Come Out

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter five**  
><strong>"The Good That Won't Come Out"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>When Mukuro awoke, she noticed that the night was not so cold as she thought it would be. Then she realized that only part of her body was cold, and the other part was warm.<p>

Her eyes snapped open, and then she discovered why she was warm—someone was curled up against her, clinging to her arm. Mukuro nearly leaped to her feet and destroyed whoever it was that _dared_ to be so close to her, before she remembered that it was the slave girl she had met the previous night. Mukuro had allowed her to get close, but not _this_ close, while she had still been awake—but apparently the girl had gotten very cold in the night.

Or very lonely.

Mukuro ignored the faint empathy she felt and touched the girl's shoulder to rouse her, then pulled back with surprise as the girl jumped, obviously startled awake. The fear and anguish Mukuro saw briefly flicker in the girl's eyes made her chest feel tight, before the look vanished into curious recollection.

"Ohh," she breathed, moving away from Mukuro stiffly. "Ohh, it's morning," she said almost sadly.

Mukuro regarded her silently, wondering if she was going to leave now like she said she would, although it was obvious she did not want to. Then the girl asked, "Who are you?"

Mukuro furrowed her brow, unsure of how she should answer her. 'I was once a slave like you,' 'I was a king of this world,' 'I'm just a regular apparition.'

She settled with, "I'm Mukuro."

The girl frowned. "I don't have a name." She looked around. "I've never even seen this place before now. It's huge, and scary, but not so scary as before."

"You can make yourself a name. You have that freedom now," Mukuro suggested.

"That's not important right now," the girl replied. "I want to know who I am before I try calling myself by a name. I want a name that actually has to do with me." This bit of wisdom both saddened and filled Mukuro with respect. Then the girl pointed off into the distance. "What is that?"

Mukuro followed her finger. ". . . That's a tree."

"What is a tree?"

"It's a living thing, like an animal or a person . . . like this grass." Mukuro grabbed a handful and pulled it up. "They're plants."

The girl seemed intrigued by this concept. "Oh. . . ," she said, but it was clear that she didn't entirely understand.

Mukuro stood up. "Do you remember where I told you to go?"

The slave-girl looked up at her nervously for a moment, and Mukuro was about to ask again when she said, "Where am I going?"

"To the Mukade forest. You can stay there safely, and one day, I can come find you."

"What?" she asked, turning pale. "One day? Where are you going?"

Mukuro narrowed her eyes at her, then took a deep breath. "Someone important was taken from me. I'm getting him back. Now, go."

The girl stared at the ground, looking lost and empty. Mukuro glared at her. "You can't go with me."

"Please," the girl said, so quietly that Mukuro's rigid gaze softened, "show me out of _here_."

There was no way that Mukuro could do it. Hiei was missing, and she had to find him as soon as possible. "No," she replied, and began to walk away.

Several steps more, and Mukuro heard shuffling behind her. Her fists clenched, and she turned around to berate the girl one final time.

Mukuro saw the cold gaze of a young girl covered in scars and dressed in tatters, confused and alone, willing to fight anyone to be allowed the simple gift of living.

And there was no way Mukuro could _not_ do it.

Cursing herself, the girl, slavery, and the sky, Mukuro snatched the girl's arm in her hand and led her along.

—.—

Mukuro couldn't have spent more than two hours leading the girl along when they came across a small village of apparitions nestled in a sparsely wooded forest. The young girl immediately began to ask Mukuro questions before they even set foot near it.

"What is that place?"

"A village, where groups of people live together." The young girl shuddered slightly, and Mukuro revised her statement. "They work on equal grounds usually, not by force. You'll see."

Mukuro felt a twinge of nostalgia as she watched the demon girl take in village life with a child's eyes. There were merchants, several of whom approached them; there were children playing and fighting; many adults were yammering in the street. It seemed so cheerful, so normal, and yet Mukuro could see the wonder in her companion's eyes.

"Go ahead," Mukuro urged, gesturing at a nearby salesman, "ask him the best way to the Mukade forest from here."

The nameless girl eyed her nervously for a moment, then shyly wandered away. Mukuro watched the exchange for several minutes before the girl came back with an alien glow in her eyes, and then she led Mukuro away from the crowd and ducked into the space between two buildings.

Mukuro inspected her as she procured a hunk of meat from seemingly nowhere and began to gnaw on it. "Did you steal that?"

The girl's cheeks colored. "I'm hungry."

Mukuro sighed, deciding she didn't have time or patience to teach this former slave-girl proper etiquette—not that it was in healthy supply in the Makai, anyway. As she watched the girl eat, Mukuro began to wonder about this young demon, and she asked, "How did you escape?"

The girl's heart seemed to stop for a moment before she licked her lips and shuffled her feet.

"Nevermind, you don't have to tell me," Mukuro said, unwilling to push the question when the girl was not ready to discuss it.

A few moments passed in silence until the girl said, "A tunnel."

Mukuro glanced at her, waiting for the rest. The girl cleared her throat and continued, "We tricked 'em, and I found a tunnel . . . and I just went for it."

"We?" Mukuro asked.

"Me and some of the others," the girl clarified. "Not all of 'em got out. I only saw a couple, and . . . we got separated." The girl nibbled another bit of meat and swallowed it uncomfortably.

"These scars are how I got out," Mukuro told her, pointing at her face.

The girl turned toward Mukuro, eyes bulging like round stones as she grasped the implication. Then her gaze flickered to something beyond her, and Mukuro turned around to see a male demon approaching them.

"Who's the pretty little newcomer?" he said, eyeballing the slave girl, who was obviously bristling with fear.

"Get lost," Mukuro growled. The demon simply peered at her with vague disgust.

"I wasn't talkin' to you, woman," he grunted, reaching one hand toward the slave girl, who was flinching up against the wall. "I was greetin' the—"

Mukuro's arm cleaved through the space between them, blasting the demon away from the girl and into the air with a spray of red light. The slave girl's meat dropped to the ground with a thud.

"Come on," Mukuro snapped, reaching for the girl's arm, finding her hand, and she led them away down the street.

"You . . . ," Mukuro heard behind her, but she ignored it. Yes, she had possibly killed him. Yes, she was a heartless merciless tyrant. Yes, she—

"You're like me."

Mukuro stopped, turning slowly to look at the girl behind her, and for the second time since they had met, Mukuro saw her own pitiful self in this adolescent. Then she shook her head. "You're no Mukuro." Her eyes narrowed. "You are more of a Kazue to me." Mukuro saw the girl's eyes light up, a smile brightening her face to an extent Mukuro had never seen.

Then, she saw utter terror.

"Mukuro!" the girl shrieked, and Mukuro whipped around. Expressionless, ogre-like demons were pouring into the village ahead of them.

And they were headed their way.

Mukuro made a swift one-eighty, dragging the slave girl as quickly as she could—but they weren't going to get out at this pace. The girl was too slow. If it hadn't been for Hiei's sword in Mukuro's other hand, she would have scooped the girl in her arms and took off; as it was, Mukuro jerked the girl and tossed her awkwardly over her shoulder despite all protest.

But the robots had already predicted their moves to this point—they swarmed in from seemingly all sides. How had they honed in so quickly, so accurately?

Mukuro had no choice but to face them head-on. She dropped the slave girl and batted away one fast-approaching machine, then glanced over her shoulder. If she didn't carve a path out now, they'd be completely surrounded.

Mukuro's mind worked quickly. She thrust Hiei's sword in the slave girl's grasp, snatched her up in one arm again, and ran at one wave of robots. Just as she reached them, she leaped into the air with the intent of clearing the space over them to reach the other side and escape. But having the girl made it difficult, and as they neared landing, one of the robots managed to catch Mukuro's ankle.

Mukuro only had a split second of decision before she hit the ground, and decided she would rather be injured than captured. She shot a blast of red energy at the cyborg that held her, and the resulting explosion launched the two girls further into the air before they tumbled into the ground, several yards away from each other.

Mukuro regained her composure and shot up from the ground, lungs stinging from the air she forced herself to gulp. The slave girl was still struggling with the ground, burned and cut and still clutching Hiei's sword firmly in one hand.

"Kazue!" Mukuro screamed, but it was all she could do to toss the bots away while they closed in around them. The scrape of a blade being drawn nearly stopped her heart. "No, don't!" There was a metallic twang as the slave girl attempted to slice a robot to no avail, and a subsequent scream of disappointment and fear at her failure.

Mukuro watched for what seemed like forever as the mechanical monster slung both hulking metal arms at the young girl, clutching at her throat, yanking her into the air.

The only sounds following the cracking of bones and dreams was the clatter of Hiei's sword and someone's voice wailing in her ears.

Everything following those moments was a blur. Mukuro was holding Kazue, then she was running. Then, she stood for many long seconds, cutting and cutting in the air. The blasts she heard while cutting still echoed in her mind.

Then, she was outside the forest, and Kazue was on the ground, still and broken.

Nothing but a sweet, lily-white memory.


	6. Vicious Traditions

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter six**  
><strong>"Vicious Traditions"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>The man slowly made his way down the line of boys and girls, inspecting each one as he went. He grabbed one girl up by the collar of her tattered shirt, and the other children promptly shifted away, bumping into each other as they stumbled away from the strange visitor.<p>

A young boy only a few inches shorter than Kouta tripped and fell into him. Kouta caught him by the shoulders and righted him, and when he was safely on his feet, the child looked back at him with huge, terrified eyes.

Kouta leaned sideways to get a better view as the strange man literally lifted the small girl off her feet, the tip of his large, angled nose almost touching hers. "This one was here last week!" The girl whimpered and closed her eyes, and he snarled in disgust, promptly throwing her at the wall. The sickening smack of her fragile body against solid stone hung heavy in the air, but was quickly replaced by the sound of quiet sobbing.

"Sorry," said Masuyo, not sounding particularly sorry at all. "I suppose you have seen that one before. I'm afraid I must have misspoken."

"You're taking the piss on me again, Masuyo," he said. "No matter how many times you show me these foul, ugly creatures, they're not gonna be worth any more than the mud on my boots."

"I can't do anything about it. You know things have been slow around here lately."

"Hah!" said the man. "Just admit it, you can't look after things any more. They're getting smarter—maybe smarter than you. Otherwise, how did that flock of them manage to escape last week?"

Masuyo said nothing.

"I should go somewhere else to get what I want," the man continued. "You're not my only option, you know. It's just that the stock from you is livelier. The downside is when they get lively, they start to get the idea that you don't know what's best for them anymore." The man's face twisted into a lop-sided smile as he stared at them. "Isn't that right?"

The girl started crying in full, gasping for breath as she choked on her own tears.

"Shut your filthy mouth!" he shouted, kicking up dirt in her direction. He turned to look at the rest of the group of children as they edged away from him, clinging to each other in fear. "Weren't you told to form a line?"

No one moved.

"Get in a damn line!"

A few girls lurched forward with the obvious intent of following the man's orders, but when no one else followed, they quickly retreated back to the safety of their tiny cluster. Kouta, who had somehow ended up in the front, looked about himself at the six children who had placed themselves behind him.

The man began his approach, every step he made heavy and deliberate. "What about you?" he said when he was towering over Kouta. His skin was an unhealthy shade of gray and as he bared his teeth, it became evident that many of them were either rotting out or missing entirely.

"That one is ill," came Masuyo's voice. "Confirm it for yourself, he is unnaturally hot to the touch."

"He doesn't look sick to me!" said the man. "Unless it's his arm you're talking about! What are you hiding under those wrappings, boy?"

"I don't—" Before Kouta could finish, the man was already grabbing at him, aggressively tearing at the bandages which were tightly wrapped around his right arm. He pulled back the material to reveal a dark, flame-like tattoo winding around the top of his bicep. "What is this?" the man demanded.

Kouta just stared back at him blankly.

"What's your problem?" the man snarled, squeezing Kouta's forearm in a painfully tight fist. "Are you deaf or just retarded? Aren't you scared of me?"

"I don't know."

"He's lying!" proclaimed the man. "Look at his face, he's not afraid! This one's trouble, Masuyo. He's a lying, three-eyed little runt! Those jewels around his neck look expensive, though—if you're smart, you'll keep them for yourself when you dispose of him."

"That hurts," said Kouta, looking at where the man's fingers were digging into the bandages. "Let go of me." He distinctly heard the sound of feet hurriedly shuffling behind him—a sound which instinct told him was one of retreat—and a split-second later he found himself sprawled on the ground, one cheek planted squarely in the dirt and the other throbbing in pain.

—.—

By the time Kouta had managed to sit up, the group of children had scattered, but the man had succeeded in capturing one boy, whom he was now holding by a fistful of the back of his shirt.

"I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU TO GET IN A LINE!" the man shouted at them. "Filthy little brats! Don't you get it? You have to do what I say!"

The boy scrambled wildly to escape the clutches of his captor, causing the flimsy material of his shirt to rip and leaving him to fall to the floor with an inelegant thud.

"You're going to see how silly this all is," said the man smugly. "You couldn't follow simple instructions, and now one of your little friends is going to find out what happens to disobedient cowards!"

"No!" screamed the boy suddenly as he lifted himself off the ground, but his efforts were squashed by the boot that was driven into the small of his back.

"Shut up!" the man said, grinding his heel into the boy's spine, a contorted smile creeping across his features at the cry of pain he received in response. Finally he lifted his foot. "Get up!" he barked.

After a short pause, the boy did as he was told, climbing to his feet despite the visible shaking of his legs. He stood there stiffly, his back to the man, body tense like a wild animal ready to bolt.

"Take off your pants."

Something in Kouta's mind snapped, as though he hadn't been completely aware before, but had now woken up in a bad dream.

The boy didn't follow the order. Instead, he threw his body forward—an escape attempt made in vain, for he was roughly caught around the middle by the man and dragged back.

What followed were events that Kouta wished he had the option to un-see. He wished that he had looked away, because he knew that it was all very, very wrong. But he knew that the sounds and images were ones that could not be erased—the ripping of the fabric of the boy's pants as they were torn from his fragile body and the cries of protest and pain coupled with grunts and a final groan of release. The man pulled on his pants and exited the room swiftly after that, leaving the boy to lie crumpled on the floor, face stained with tears and eyes filled with terror, stuttering and whimpering unintelligibly as he curled into a fetal position atop the remaining tatters of his shirt.

The other children stayed against the wall, a few of them crying, others looking away or squeezing their eyes shut. But there were some, like Kouta, who continued to stare in shock and disbelief at the boy on the floor, visions of the act that had occurred there just minutes before replaying in their minds with horrific clarity. No one moved to help the boy dress himself or to offer comfort. It was as though time had frozen, and that one moment would never end.

Kouta could not even remember the guards taking him back to his cell. He briefly entertained the possibility that he had dreamed the whole event, but even in his lack of understanding it was obvious that that was not the case.

He sat in his cell. He waited for something to happen. He examined the stones around his neck.

He tried not to think about it.

He thought about it anyway.

It would have been a lie to say that nothing had changed. Hearing the distant footsteps of approaching guards supplied Kouta with feelings of anxiety and apprehension instead of the desire for companionship he had experienced before.

He did not know where he was, but he knew that it was not a good place for him to be. He wanted out.

And tonight, the gruel tasted sour.

Kouta tried to fall asleep, tried to somehow turn off his mind and escape from this cold, lonely reality. But he found that every time slumber held out its inviting arms to him, his mind would not allow him to go to it.

A tingling registered in his head, somewhere in the midst of his warbled mess of worries, and he was unable to ignore that feeling as it grew stronger and more insistent.

When he closed his eyes, he saw images of new, strange places, filled with twisting, silhouetted shapes and huge fields of color.

He didn't know what any of it meant or where it was coming from. He couldn't leave, but perhaps he oughtn't stay.

It was all too terrifying.

And so he lay awake, wondering.


	7. Struggle and Nothing

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter seven**  
><strong>"Struggle and Nothing"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Mukuro sat down next to the fragile, lifeless body, studying it with a quiet emptiness. Some part of her felt that she should be thinking or feeling something, but none of it came.<p>

She might have known this girl. She probably knew her better than she thought. Now she wouldn't, couldn't, know for sure.

This gaping void was familiar. She was alone.

Mukuro dug. She laid a soft, limp girl in the earth, then covered her, sparing no extra moments to allow for any thought. She didn't want to think. When she was done, she regretted it. She could have spent time memorizing that face before it was gone. Then something stronger, and colder, quashed this feeling.

Mukuro walked away, searching for her purpose again. Then she remembered a terrible thing she had done.

She had left Hiei's sword behind.

And now, that was all she had.

—.—

When Mukuro returned to outskirts of the town, she searched the destructed remains of metal over and over before she was filled with a sense of urgent dread. Someone had taken it. And she had to find that person. She could not go on without it.

The town was not bustling with merchants as it had been before—presumably from chaos that ensued with the appearance of the robots—but it seemed things were returning to some normalcy, though she saw a few knowing glares and got more than one bad phrase called out to her. She didn't care.

The darker parts of town were likely, and the darker parts were where she searched the most. She hid, lurked, and surveyed. There were many weapons dealers. As they whipped out any new items, she tensed. Over and over again she was at a loss.

Then Mukuro rounded a corner of an alley, meeting the sight of a demon offering a small collection of assorted items. And Hiei's sword. "Those damn things breezing through, looking for slaves," she heard him hiss before she could rush in, and she stopped herself. "Nuisance, I say why can't we keep them ourselves and resell them?" The seller and buyer chuckled.

Mukuro came between them and grabbed the scavenging merchant's wrist, snapping it backwards. He screeched in pain. "This is mine," she said, and grabbed the sword.

"I'm buying that!" the other demon objected, then swung at her. She dodged it. "No," she told him, then punched the crown of his head into the ground.

Hiei was kidnapped by robots that were working for the slave trade.

Hiei was somewhere in there. Mukuro would find him.

—.—

As Mukuro was leaving the town, she asked about the exact location of the Plains of Shadow. Someone simply smiled and told her the way.

One hand was clutching Hiei's sword, the other stinging from the bite of her nails. All she could focus on was direction. She repeated instructions over and over again in her mind, the voice growing angrier until it slowly faded into a tune that hummed continuously in her brain.

Hiei was in the slave trade. It churned her stomach and left a horrid, bitter taste in her mouth. Memories she did not want filled her with a horror she could not bear to fully acknowledge.

The Plains of Shadow were not far. She would search them up and down, in and out, until she found it. Found the way to him.

Before long, forestry dwindled again. As the trees disappeared, innumerable flowers began to take their place. Mukuro felt a very blurry image float at the edge of her memory. These fields, thick with orange flowers, were the alleged Plains of Shadow.

Something so bright covering up so much darkness.

Mukuro began to wade through.

The smell was almost sickeningly sweet. It only helped to turn Mukuro's stomach even more, and she struggled with all of her defiance to keep from retching. It eventually felt like the scent was all around her, and she was swimming in it, like a sea of warm milk, thick in her nose and her throat. She stopped and coughed, trying to free herself from it. It was numbing her, disorienting her.

These flowers were fucking poisoning her, and she had no choice but to turn back.

Mukuro barely dragged herself out of the field, gasping for air, her face and throat burning, and emptied whatever was left in her stomach onto the grass. Hours wasted, and she was poisoned by flowers.

Hiei was so close.

Mukuro couldn't tolerate her failure. Her throat burned and her lungs felt as if they were bursting, but she screamed and screamed until there was nothing of her voice and her strength left to continue.

—.—

It was dark.

There was something there. Gray stone, maybe. Two faint blue globes. Metal bars. Dim light. Tunnels. Others. Seeking, seeking.

Mukuro saw herself. She was unconscious.

The gray stone returned. Then it was fuzzy. The scene replayed, fading in and out.

Mukuro opened her eyes. It was nighttime. For a moment she felt displaced, numb, and then she shifted and realized she was lying flat on her stomach. She was in the grass.

Slowly, it all came back to her. Her throat was burning and her head was beginning to ache. Some deep part of her wished she had not woken up. Then she remembered the dream.

The blue globes were Hiei's tear stones.

Could it be that he was contacting her with the Jagan? Calling out to her?

He must have been close. She felt it in her gut. There had to be another way into that slave prison other than the deadly field of flowers. There had to be some trick.

Mukuro pushed herself up off the ground, and her stomach turned again. She had to get away from this field, find some water and food. She had to, to make it to Hiei, even though she hated it.

She wobbled to her feet, and acids bubbled in her throat. She swallowed hard and forced herself to walk, staggering with every other step. Everything ached. Her body, her mind. She hated feeling so weak. More than that she hated her failure. Even more than that, she hated feeling so lost without him.

Mukuro collapsed at the first stream she found and calmed her throat and stomach. She needed to rest and regain her senses, though it was the last thing she wanted. It was beyond frustrating, painful even. She couldn't afford to waste any more time, make any more mistakes. She had already lost so much.

Briefly, Kazue's face flickered into her mind.

Mukuro forced it away. She couldn't allow herself to be weak. There was no time for it. It didn't fit into her world, not now.


	8. Leaving Hope

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter eight**  
><strong>"Leaving Hope"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Masuyo caressed his cheek where the man had struck him, and her fingertips felt raw against the freshly-bruised skin. "It would serve you well to do as you're told from now on," she said.<p>

"Why didn't you stop him?" asked Kouta.

She frowned and withdrew her hand. "It wasn't my place."

"He would have listened to you."

"I don't know about that."

"You just stood by and let it happen."

"So did you," remarked Masuyo, but at his pained expression, she continued more gently, "But don't dwell on it. Better to just relax and accept that there are some things you can't change."

She handed him a cup of water, and when he brought the rim of the cup to his mouth he realized that his hands were trembling. He tried to focus on the sweet taste of the liquid sliding down his throat, to allow it to calm him in the way that it always did, but today that was proving more difficult than before. The scene he had witnessed between the man and the boy continually repeated itself in its mind, along with images of places and things he could not ever remember seeing before.

His body was tense from stress and exhaustion and his mind was foggy from lack of sleep. He had a headache.

When he handed the cup back to her, Masuyo said, "I've spoken to an acquaintance of mine who says that the jewels you carry are rare and expensive. If you'll loan me one of them, I can take it to him to confirm the exact price."

Kouta's hand few to where the stones rested against his chest, and he stared at Masuyo with tired, uncomprehending eyes.

"I'll bring it back to you with the estimate, and you can decide whether or not you'd like me to sell it. If the price is high enough, you can use the money to leave."

His eyes widened. "Leave?" He lifted one of the stones from around his neck and held it in front of his face, looking into his tiny reflection once again.

He had thought he wanted to leave. But if he left, would the confusing things he imagined become a reality for him, then?

"And you'll give it back to me?" he asked.

"Yes," she said reassuringly as she took the necklace from his fingers. "I'll have it for you the next time we see each other. There's no point in worrying, Kouta."

But he could not help it—from that moment on, he only worried more.

—.—

There was a small structural weakness in the base of the wall of Kouta's cell. When he was returned to isolation and discovered the series of cracks and breaks in the brittle stone, he seated himself in the dusty corner and began to dig. He picked and scraped at the stones with his bare hands, and when he managed to break off a small chuck, he used that as a tool to work more efficiently. When he was tired, he curled up against the wall and stared into the darkened corridor.

He felt oddly bare with only one stone around his neck, and awaited his next visit with Masuyo if only to get the other one back, but no matter how hard he worked or how long he waited or how intensely he stared at the empty corridor, he never heard the sound of grinding stone at the end of the hall that signified the opening of the door—and so the guards never came.

Kouta dug until his hands were raw and his fingers bled. He unraveled the bandages on his right arm and left them lying in a pile on the floor. The tattoo covering the length of his arm held the resemblance of some flaming creature, but its image caused no memories to resurface in his mind.

He had felt of the eye on his head, could feel it pulsing against his skull, and wondered if it was somehow causing strange images to appear in his mind.

After an indeterminable period of digging at the wall, his fingertips stung and dripped small pools of blood on the floor, yet the cracks in the wall were not significantly larger than they had been when he started.

Kouta gathered up the pile of small rocks he'd managed to break free and walked to the front of his cell. Singling out the largest, sharpest stones of the bunch, he leaned back, and applied all his weight into throwing one of them through the metal bars and into the cell across from him.

The stone issued a resounding crack as it hit bare wall, and so Kouta threw another, and another, and—

There was thump and a sudden cry of pain.

"Come out where I can see you!" Kouta said.

There was a moment of nothing, and then a small voice answered him: "Leave me alone!"

Kouta threw another stone, and once again it hit its intended target.

"Stop," said the voice, but rather than sounding authoritative or angry, the tone was one of hopelessness and distress. "Please," it said. "I'm tired of being hit. . . ."

Something about those words permeated Kouta's confused and empty heart, and he released the stones he had been holding, letting them fall to the ground at his feet. "Let me see your face."

For a long time, the voice did not respond. Then there came a shuffling of bare skin on the floor, and a small face appeared through the bars of the other cell.

It was a young girl.

Her hair was blonde and matted, her clothes ratty, and her face smeared with dirt.

"Who are you?" he asked.

She blinked back at him, her large, empty eyes clouded with anxiety, but she said nothing.

"Say something!" he said.

She flinched and peered through the bars down the corridor between them, as though fearing an intrusion. When she turned back to him and spoke, her voice was barely above a whisper, "You don't understand."

He twisted his face in confusion.

"Don't hurt yourself." Her words quiet and rushed, and Kouta followed her gaze to his bloody hands. "You'll only make it worse." She turned from him then, and Kouta could see that she was shivering beneath the too-large clothing hanging over her emaciated body.

"Wait," he said, as she walked to the back of her cell. She paused only briefly before disappearing once again into the darkness.

Kouta looked down at his hands again, which had begun to sting quite badly. Every exhalation he made materialized as a puff of fog in the air in front of his face, yet he did not feel cold, at least in the physical sense.

He was alone again.

—.—

Kouta continued to scrape away at the hole in the wall, despite the girl's advice not to. It hurt, and his hands were raw and bloody, but he was past caring. A strange sense of emptiness filled both his inner and outer world, and a dark longing for something with which to fill it. He had formed no realistic plan and had stopped attempting to decipher his feelings and actions. The fact was that he had no idea what he was doing, in any sense.

He had visited Masuyo twice since giving up one of his gems necklaces to her, and she had yet to return it to him. Each time he inquired about it, she brusquely told him that demon she had given it to had needed to confirm its price with other sources and the appraisal would take longer than expected. Her short, unhelpful answers and soft caresses left Kouta conflicted: She left him feeling uncertain and scared, but he was beginning to crave those feelings like he craved time with her. He hated himself for feeling so desperately lost and lonely, and for not being able to deny the pleasure of her companionship even if deeply-rooted instincts cautioned him against it.

"You're nothing to her," the blonde girl whispered to him one day, staring at him wide-eyed through the bars of her cell for the second time in their acquaintance. "No matter what she says to you, you're nobody here."

The weight of those words and the flimsy whisper she uttered them in made Kouta angry enough to explode in a snarl of emotion, and he gripped the cell bars hard in his fists as he filled the entire corridor with his roar. When he was finished, the girl was gone. She did not come out again, and Kouta did not expect her to. Hot metal burning on his palms, he retreated to his own dark corner, collapsing on the blanket the guards had given him. He fell asleep furious and awoke feeling empty and complacent once again.

What felt like an eternity passed, and at the end of it, he found himself once again with Masuyo.

The first thing he said to her was, "Give my necklace back to me."

"I've been informed that you have been trying to break out of your cell," she replied. She didn't sound angry, but Kouta knew he had done something wrong, and so he apprehensively drank the cup of liquid she handed him, using the time to consider a response. "Two of the bars were melted almost all the way through," she said. "From what the guards tell me, it is a miracle that they remained in-tact."

He swallowed the last of the contents of the cup and licked his lips, wondering vaguely at the taste left on his tongue, which was sweeter than usual by two-fold. Masuyo was looking directly into his eyes, her gaze penetrating and probing, and Kouta found himself lost for words. "I wasn't trying to—"

Masuyo suddenly took his face in her hands. "How did you do it?" she asked, a desperation in her voice that sounded all-too-familiar to Kouta's ears. "Where did you come from? Where did you get those gems?"

"Those are the things I've been asking you," Kouta said.

She ran her thumb across his cheek. "How is it you are so warm?" she asked him, an almost mournful gleam passing over her dark eyes before she leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.

Her lips were cold, making the brisk gesture seem almost passive. Kouta accepted it, but did nothing in return. That feeling of calmness was threatening to overtake him again, and as Masuyo ran her hands downward past his chest, the sensation of her fingers on his skin felt distant and faraway—in his mind it almost seemed as though he wasn't actually experiencing any of it. There was a tug on his waist and, looking down, it registered in his mind that she had loosened his belts.

He heard something fall to floor and realized he was no longer holding the empty cup.

The next moment, he was on his back on the cot and she was straddling him. Looking up at her face, he was struck with a strange sense of familiarity, but despite his state of relaxation, it only served to make his chest more heavy with loneliness and longing.

"Stop," he said, but the command was half-hearted at best.

"You want this."

Kouta was sure that he didn't. "This isn't supposed to happen," he told her. "Someone is . . . is . . . supposed to be here."

Masuyo paused and looked down at his face. "What?" she asked flatly.

"She's going to take me back. She . . . she. . . ." But Kouta could not remember. What he was saying didn't even make sense to him, so it couldn't possibly make sense to anyone else. "She . . . I think she looked like you."

"You're hallucinating."

"But I—"

"No one is taking you anywhere!" she snapped.

"I think I can remem—"

"Be quiet now," she said.

"But—"

"_Quiet._" She pushed her hand against his groin, and only at the rush of pleasure that her actions produced did Kouta realize the intensity of his arousal. He groaned softly as her hand slid inside his pants and grabbed hold of him, all other preoccupations leaving his mind. "It's time you learned what is expected of you."

Masuyo's hands were freezing, but he thrust into her grasp anyway, blindly lifting his hips into her touch. His entire body felt numb except for the dull ache of lust. He wondered vaguely what he was doing, but he had never known—ever since he had met her, he had not known anything useful except that he was here and there was nothing he could do about it. Every twitch of his muscles felt empty, and he knew that all of it was wrong. His mind was muddled in confusion, but his body didn't care.

He didn't really feel this. He didn't feel any of it.

Vaguely, he thought of the cup of liquid—water?—and something in his mind flickered. Flickered, and that was all.

He made to lift his torso off the cot and reach for her, whining in frustration when he was pinned back down. He grabbed at the front of her kimono, fingers pulling back the material and just grazing her bare skin before a sudden sharp pain broke through the haze of desire that had been blocking out his thought processes.

"Don't touch me!"

Her shriek rang in his ears as he held his hand to his cheek, and he stared up at her wide-eyed, stunned at having been hit, but even more-so at the object which was now hanging in his view.

"My necklace," he murmured.

Masuyo looked down, surprise taking the place of rage in her eyes. She let go of him, using both hands to tuck the stone matter-of-factly into her kimono before moving her hands once again to his pants.

Something inside Kouta wrenched and squirmed, a disgusting feeling bubbling up inside him, threatening to boil over. "You lied to me," he told her. "You said you didn't have it!"

"I suppose I did," she said, her tone far too flippant for his liking.

"Give it back to me."

"It's mine now."

"No!" he shouted, and for a split second she actually looked shocked at the outburst. "Give it back!"

He clawed at her clothing, grabbing hold of the cord around her neck and struggling to see past her mass of hair in order to remove it. She lifted one of her hands in the air and made to smack him again, but he easily caught her wrist mid-swing.

"Let go," she snarled.

"Get off of me," he shot back. "Return what's mine." He pulled at the necklace, willing to break the cord if it meant having the item back in his possession, but instead of ending up with the gem held victoriously in his hand, the next moment he was curled up on his side on the cot, clutching his groin and gasping at the agonizing pain there.

"You clearly don't understand your situation, Kouta. I have the power here."

Kouta thought that he might cry, but he used every ounce of willpower he had to fight back the urge. Through his blurring vision, he saw Masuyo withdraw her knee and climb off the cot.

"N-not . . . fair. . . ."

"Of course it isn't," was all she said. "Nothing in this life is."


	9. House of Secrets

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter nine**  
><strong>"House of Secrets"**  
><strong>

* * *

><p>Mukuro woke again next to the stream, much of her strength having returned and the sickness faded, but she was famished. She cupped her hand in the stream and quenched her thirst before she stood, stretching her quivering muscles. Her eyes wandered, observing the trees. No fruit here, thought she doubted that would stay in her stomach long, anyway. Mukuro tested the air. It was thick with the ghost scents of birds and small animals.<p>

After many careful minutes of lurking, Mukuro caught herself a large, four-eared hare. She sunk her teeth in and tore the skin away while it struggled in her grasp, and as blood flowed over her lips, she began to consider a strategy for getting to Hiei.

The field was pointless to try again. There must have been a place for the buyers and other flesh-and-blood creatures to make in through without the threat of the flowers' toxin. Surely someone would know this way. Someone could lead her there, show her the entrance, and she could . . .

She could be the thing she hated.

If Mukuro pretended to be a slave handler, she would be easily invited in. She hated the notion, and the idea made her sick. But she would do it, and for Hiei, she could do it well.

When all was gone but fur and bones, Mukuro found the stream again and contemplated her reflection. She was dirty, her hair was wind-swept, and there was dried blood smeared on her cheek. She supposed having bandages for her face would add a certain mystery she would have liked to achieve, but this would do just as well. Mukuro stared at her face—this face that was now to become a sadistic master, a rapist. This face was ugly.

Yes, it would not be difficult.

—.—

The wind sifted through the leaves, the only audible sound other than Mukuro's breathing. She knelt in a tree on the outskirts of the plains, eyes darting at any sign of movement. Something, at some point, would come through the area, showing her the way, and she would have to be ready.

After an hour, she saw movement in the fields. A closer look showed her robots easily gliding through, collecting the flowers in sacks. To what end, she could only speculate. They disappeared further in, leaving Mukuro, yet again, with nothing.

She huffed, nerves tingling with disappointment, but she would not give up.

It felt like forever before she saw another living being in the forest. This time, she knew it was not a robot, and she followed it as closely as possible. It looked like a male from this distance, bluish in color. She followed him even as the trees thinned, getting further and further away with the less cover she could obtain. Having a direction was plenty to point her the way, and Mukuro gathered herself for what she was preparing to do.

Mukuro approached the entrance, every step a cold vibration in her legs, her stomach turning, her skin on fire. She forced the thought of what she was going into away and focused on Hiei. To get him back, she would push through anything, even her past.

Even the pain, the entrapment, the uncertainty, the suffering.

Mukuro locked everything away and stared ahead of her. To return to this place, she needed to return to her former self, to her ability to concentrate only on her goals, and abandon the creeping fingers of life that swelled inside of her. They would only cripple her here.

In the distance, there was a spot in the ground that dipped into darkness. The closer she got, the more the darkness cleared into something visible, until she finally stood above a set of stairs that descended a considerable distance under the ground. Mukuro followed them.

At the bottom, she was met with the sight of two robots guarding what appeared to be a very thick metal door. The hulking beasts barely seemed to notice her, before one of them stated, very matter-of-factly, "You are trespassing."

"I'm here to purchase," she replied.

"What are you here to purchase?"

"A slave."

Another pause. "You are not in the registry," the other said.

"Then register me."

They seemed to consider this for a moment. "Name?"

"Michi," she answered without batting an eye. They stared at her for too long before they seemed to accept this and turned, swinging the door open, which groaned unpleasantly. Mukuro stepped forth, inspecting the door for faults and weaknesses before it slammed shut behind her. There were two new robotic guards on the other side that intercepted her, leading her down a long tunnel. They mentioned something about meeting the warden, but Mukuro barely heard it.

She was in, and she would have to search in a maze of cages and rooms and darkness and . . .

Mukuro felt suddenly claustrophobic, and her breath caught in her throat. Every hair on her body was on end, every nerve screaming at her to run, to escape, before it was too late. This place rattled her, making her feel as if she was losing the control that she had so carefully constructed, but she fought it. This place would not own her again, but she could not leave it alone.

There was a point when the tunnel ebbed into hallways, and Mukuro took time to note where she was before taking the first opening and sneaking away from the machines that were directing her. Hours ago she had felt a surge of Hiei's power, and she had done her best to lock on to the source, to use it as a guide in hopes of finding him, but the power had now dissipated into a dullness that she could barely discern before losing track of altogether. She would have to trust nothing but instinct and luck in finding him in the shortest amount of time possible.

Mukuro broke locks on doors that led down new hallways, and she peered into cages, dashing from one location to the next, occasionally meeting dark and broken gazes, but she could not stop to dwell on them for an instant. A part of her cursed herself for that, knowing that those eyes would haunt her, but it was something she could not allow to surface in her mind.

Then, somewhere close by, she caught the muffled sounds of conversation and slowed her pace, muscles tensing as she focused on the sound.

"—good features, so it'd be a great match for him."

"The other one has a better figure. There's too many skinny ones as it is."

"I'll pair them tonight, then?"

"Yes, go ahead and use the last of—"

Mukuro couldn't listen to any more. Her stomach was clenching with disgust at the thought of what was occurring here—speaking of their traits like they were breeding animals—and she could barely even allow herself to process such torture. Her heart pounded painfully at the thought that Hiei might have been already subject to it, and her legs carried her faster away. She couldn't allow that to happen.

Mukuro eventually noticed the prisoners growing smaller either in stature or in age, and felt that she was either getting closer to, or dreadfully further away from, Hiei, before her every bitter prayer and hope was risen to life when she set eyes on him hunched in the shadows behind metal bars.

The rush she felt must have been of elation or else it was her heart breaking.

"Hiei!" she hissed, as much a cry of relief as of pain at seeing him here. She quickly dismantled the lock that kept his cage shut, sliding it open.


	10. Erased Over Out

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter ten**  
><strong>"Erased Over Out"

* * *

><p>Mukuro pulled the bars of the cell open, but she hadn't the time to speak another word or gather her thoughts to remember which ways they should go to escape before Hiei was on her in a way she could have never predicted in all her time with him; his hands—clutching, grabbing, pulling—and his mouth. . . .<p>

All at once, her mind and body was reeling with too many feelings and sensations. Her thought processes became a tangled mess of fear, apprehension, confusion, and longing. Hiei had never shown such an intense desire to be near her, and Mukuro was too taken aback to decide if she wanted to protest or concede. She had never wanted anyone to touch her in this way, and he was now, in the least likely of places, and she was not stopping him. Why? she had to wonder. Did he truly want her in this way? And if so, was she accepting this?

"Hurry," she breathed when he released her lips, though she realized this was vague enough to be embarrassing for her. "We have to go," she amended nervously, entirely unsure of what she was feeling or what she should do about it. She should have told him "no," or hit him, but these things didn't occur to her—the only thing that did was the fact that his hands trailed down her torso, fingers biting into her hips, his body pressing tightly against her, firm and warm and also terrifying.

Then he paused and said, "Who are you?"

Everything Mukuro felt vanished into a harsh numbness, and her chest clenched with a pain she had never felt before.

She snatched Hiei's chin in her hand and stared into his face. The eyes looking back at her were not the eyes of the Hiei that she had known, they couldn't be—wild deer eyes, clouded with confusion and lust.

_Hiei_ was gone.

Mukuro shoved him off of her, the cold air that swept in around her a welcome iciness that matched the growing feeling inside of her. "Come on," she choked out.

It couldn't be, but it was. And Mukuro was more lost than ever before.

She grabbed this stranger in Hiei's body by the arm and dragged him away from the cells, into the hallway. She had not come this far for no reason, and this couldn't be it. Hope could not be gone. It was all she had to ride on.

He allowed her to drag him about halfway the length of the corridor before managing to extricate himself from her hold, stumbling back. "We have to go back!" he protested, taking several steps away from her. "I need to be in my cell!"

She turned, then, and the look she saw written clearly on his face when he caught a full glimpse of her was enough to cripple the portion of her heart that was still vulnerable enough to feel rejected. Fear was, perhaps, what he ought to have felt—what anyone ought to have felt upon seeing her—but it was also something that he had never shown her, and seeing it now struck something inside her, something she had neglected to protect. Something she had taken for granted.

Mukuro tried to steel herself.

"I'm going to get you out of here," she told him.

"You don't understand," he said, backing away from her. "I don't know what to do! I'm not supposed to leave!"

She disregarded this, unable to stop the noise that escaped her throat as she snatched his arm up again and continued on, ignoring Hiei's increasingly fervent protests to the contrary until, eventually, he tackled her to the ground.

Mukuro could barely believe it, but she was still having trouble believing it was not truly Hiei that she had rescued.

It was abundantly clear now that he didn't trust her—didn't remember her at all, it seemed. Whatever part of him had been responsible for the forwardness he had shown outside his cell was gone now, replaced only with terror.

She rose to her feet, staring at him, unable to stop the misery that smothered her while he pressed his quivering back against the wall, clearly intent on getting as far away from her as possible.

"Hiei . . . I came to get you," she muttered, taking one small step toward him. "I'm _Mukuro_." She wanted, _needed_, this to be all right. They needed to leave, to escape this desolation. She needed the sorrow to end.

Mukuro glanced down and noticed his hand clutched around his tear stone. "Do you even remember what that is?" she asked. Then, as she realized, "Where is your other one?"

Her thoughts were stopped in their tracks as she heard the creak of metal. "Shit! Come on!" she snapped, grabbing for him again. "_Please!_" As the word left her lips Mukuro realized that she never once had said it, and as she did it now, that desperate ache in her chest returned—some lingering fear flooding her mind that they might never escape, Hiei might never return, things might never be all right.

Mercifully, reluctantly, he held out his arm to her. She took it, and then they were off—only this time, with his consent, she was able to move more rapidly. She led him through the complicated maze of cages, eventually passing through a decayed wooden door into a stone tunnel, and the ominous curve of it that prevented more than five yards of foresight made Mukuro bristle.

"I don't like this," whispered Hiei. "Shouldn't we go some other way?"

"No."

"W-why not?"

"It would lead to . . . complications." She turned to look at him but found herself unable to look at his wide-eyed, confused expression for more than an instant before turning away. "We have to keep moving," she said, and started walking again, tugging him along with her as she went.

"What was it you called me earlier?" he asked quietly as they moved through the almost-darkness. "It wasn't my name. My name is Kouta. You must have the wrong person. . . ."

Mukuro's stomach turned cold. "Hiei," she answered. "I'm not mistaken. I could never mistake you for anyone else." She glanced at him again, briefly, as if maybe Hiei would somehow magically come back at this. He didn't seem to. "Your mother gave you that stone. It was made from her tear."

He was silent for a moment, then he said, "The woman took my other one." She looked at him again, and he seemed to test her gaze before asking, "Can you help me get it back?"

Mukuro's heart raced. She didn't know what she was in for or if she would be able to fulfill that request.

"I don't kn—" the air fled her lungs as her body was suddenly propelled backward from the immense force that thrust into her upper body, and before she knew it, she was struggling with the tunnel wall to stand, Hiei's hand no longer in her grasp. "Get away!" she screamed, regaining her senses and grabbing for Hiei, determined to keep him away from the robots that were quickly trying to reclaim him.

She smacked several away with her right arm, metal meeting metal, then grasped Hiei's arm again, dragging him with her at breakneck speed along the obscure length of the tunnel. But he was giving resistance.

"Come on!" she snapped.

"But, you. . . ."

"What!"

"I'm scared!"

Mukuro glanced at him expectantly, and the look he gave back to her—the gaze of a trembling, wide-eyed little boy—snapped her self-restraint. She couldn't bear to see that look on Hiei's face, and she did the first thing she could think to do: She hit him.

He tumbled to the ground, stunned, and touched a hand to his bloody nose. Then he peered up at her. "W-why did you do that?"

"You're not supposed to be scared," she said quietly, hearing the anger and despair lacing into her words as she tried to suffocate the feelings surfacing from within.

"It isn't my fault," he said meekly. "I can't help how I feel!"

She turned her head away, but said nothing.

"I don't like this."

"Stand," Mukuro said, and he shakily rose to his feet.

"I don't want to do this anymore," he said.

A small, delicate bubble of noise left her, a taste of everything she was pointlessly willing away, uselessly attempting to choke.

_Gone._

_Impossible._

He continued to remind her with every nuance of his behavior. The behavior of a stranger.

"I don't like this any more than you do," she said, "but I'm not leaving this place without you."

"But I don't even—"

"_Shut up!_"

Her arm was shaking. Her body must have been, too.

"Why are you so mean to me?" he whined. "Did I do something wrong? And. . . and why are you crying?"

Mukuro didn't know what he was talking about until she felt a trickle down her cheek, and the taste of salt spreading over her lips. Even then she couldn't quite comprehend the magnitude of what was happening to her. She was a spectator in the struggle going on between the part of her that was mourning, and the part that spared no pity, least of all for herself.

"Shut up," she demanded again, but it was half-hearted. "We have to keep moving." What she wanted to say was, 'I want the real Hiei back.' But saying it would make no difference. This shell of Hiei had no clue what she was talking about, who she was, who he was. Her words would be wasted. He couldn't truly hear her.

Her heart opened up to the emptiness, and she allowed it to swallow her. "Come on."

She grabbed his hand again, and they continued down the tunnel with firm but shaky steps. Mukuro all but ignored Hiei, or Kouta, whoever he might have been. He gave her little resistance, presumably from whatever fear he might have had of further bodily harm. Even that was unlike Hiei.

Mukuro had finally managed to block out all the noises in her head aside from the thoughts directing her course when she heard a scuffle ahead of them and paused. She expected more robots like before, and prepared herself to handle them this time.

Except this time, she realized as they came into sight, it wasn't a couple. It wasn't even a few.

Then, Mukuro heard noise behind her, and her heart leaped in her throat. How could she fight them?

_No, no, no, no__—_ her fears crashed in on her, choking her rational mind until she was a flurry of limbs and shouts, screaming Hiei's name as he was inevitably jerked from her grasp.

Now, both mind and body, gone.

"_No!_" she cried, but as they engulfed her, she knew her struggle was pointless. She was beaten, as she always knew one day she would be, because of her feelings for him. She was helpless to save them, could do nothing but allow the robots to drag them away. Her mind was working, trying to find a solution, but bitter anguish choked her. She fought tears, but came to realize now that the fight in her was ebbing away in the face of her ultimate failure.

_Hiei . . ._

—.—

Mukuro willed her surroundings to a blur, unable to acknowledge what was happening to them now as long as she was hopeless to end it. After some time, she heard a woman's voice snap, "What is this about?" and her mind latched onto the noise. _"_Surely this is a joke. Or are you really stupid enough to believe you can waltz in here and steal what isn't yours? We don't tolerate thievery—"

_"_Give me back my necklace!" Hiei cut in. It was then that Mukuro raised her face and looked at the person addressing her.

And the air caught in her lungs.

Every detail of the woman's face crashed down on her mind with startling clarity. The subtle angles and the color of her hair. Everything.

"_You_," Mukuro stammered out. Nothing more could be said.

Mukuro's jaw tightened; her muscles trembled.

The reason she was here at all, this woman. This woman who was _not_ enslaved.

Hiei shouted out, "She's the one who stoke my necklace!" an instant before the robots turned to carry him away. She could hear him struggle, hear him yell, "Don't leave me alone again!" but her eyes remained locked, trance-like, in front of her, and it was not until Hiei tumbled onto the floor and the woman planted her foot in his gut that Mukuro's mind snapped to attention, unable to stop the growl that bubbled in her throat. "Don't touch him you piece of _shit!_" she spat, rising to her feet. "You've been doing this! _You!_"

All this trouble, losing Hiei, losing herself.

This was her reward.

It was such cruel irony, and Mukuro could not swallow it. She would not. It burned her insides like the same acid that scarred her.

"Whatever it is you think I do here is my business alone, not yours," the woman said, paying her a cold glance. "This world has long ceased to be your concern."

Mukuro froze in her place. The bitch knew! She _knew!_

Memories lurched into her mind. Being held, this woman's face, getting further and further away.

She was wrong. This world was no less Mukuro's concern than it was hers.

Hiei tackled that woman to the ground, struggling for his tear gem. He almost had it, and then she shoved a rag in his face, sending him reeling and sputtering.

Mukuro snarled. "I'll kill you! I'll kill _all_ of you!" Mukuro flung her arms, energy spewing uncontrollably, piercing the closest things to her—the robots holding on to her. They simultaneously exploded.

Mukuro felt nothing but hatred.


	11. Won't Go Quietly

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter eleven**  
><strong>"Won't Go Quietly"

* * *

><p><em>"Restrain her!"<em> Mukuro heard somewhere through the pounding of blood in her head. Her eyes were locked on the woman, but drifted when she saw blood leaking out around Hiei's body. Bits of metal were stuck in his skin.

Mukuro had done that to him.

She allowed the robots to capture her, and when she looked up again, the woman was staring at her. "What is _he_ to you?" she asked. "Your lover?" Her gaze hardened. "You should have known better."

The robots lifted Hiei into the air, and the woman led them all out of the room, down a corridor. "You should have known," she repeated. "There's nothing good for you out there. You'll always end up back here. Just accept it."

"Why?" Mukuro asked.

"It's all you'll ever be."

"Why did you give me to him?"

The woman glanced back at her for a moment. "You would have, too," she said. "Don't pretend otherwise. It makes me sick."

The woman had given Mukuro up. The woman was a slave owner. The woman was her mother.

"Fetch that girl," her mother told a robot, pointing along a row of cells. They continued walking.

"I've been there," Mukuro's mother said. "I'm no different than you. Just smarter."

"You're wrong," Mukuro hissed.

"It's so easy to say that when you still think you're in control. But make no mistake, you're not." Mukuro's mother opened the door of a room and the robots carried the slave girl and Hiei inside. "You never have been." She led them into another room, dark and empty, but it connected to the room Hiei and the slave girl were in with a large, foggy window in between them.

"I'm curious as to how you managed to make it in here at all," her mother was saying. "The fields of poisonous flowers tend to make quick work of trespassers and thieves."

"Thief?" Mukuro snapped incredulously. "_You're_ the thief!"

She seemed to ignore this. "The flowers produce a pollen that, when inhaled, has an inhibiting effect on certain centers of the brain. We've found that if mixed with water and consumed, it also lowers anxiety, increases arousal, and, in large concentrations, results in loss of memory."

Mukuro turned toward the window.

"We can see in, but they don't know," her mother stated. Mukuro wanted to rip her lips off. "You'll understand soon. And you should stay put, unless you want him dead instead of hurt."

—.—

Mukuro did not feel the robots' hands digging in to her flesh arm, or the hard floor under her knees—she simply could not drag her eyes away from the window as Hiei finally stirred. He lifted himself up, the ground beneath him slick with his blood, then locked eyes with the girl in the corner. A moment later the girl began crawling slowly toward where he was positioned on his hands and knees in the center of the room. She stopped a few feet away and lay down, her body visibly shaking.

Their eyes met again, and that was when Hiei moved to touch her.

Mukuro knew what her mother was trying to do, and she wanted desperately to ignore it, not to give in. But her gaze couldn't move. She couldn't stop herself from watching as Hiei tore open a part of her right before her eyes.

He didn't know her. He didn't know himself. But it hurt, and the pain numbed her to a depth of her soul she did not know she possessed.

It was some part, just for him. Now she could only watch as he cauterized it. The feeling spiraled away and she floated to a suspended state of emotional paralysis.

Everything she had tried to avoid, everything she never wanted, she swam in it and became it. She drowned in it and scrambled for air that never came, her lungs only dragged in the pain.

This wasn't what she had come for. This wasn't the plan. This, her blindness, her loss of control, her loss of . . . him.

He never belonged to her.

As obvious as it had always been, it screamed in her face now.

Mukuro did not notice at first that something was wrong, that the girl was crying as he tried to remove her clothes.

He stopped. They stopped.

Then, Mukuro's mother walked out of the room.

Suddenly, the door to the room where Hiei and the girl were lying burst open. Her mother was there, shouting something at them that Mukuro could not understand through the fog in her mind.

The girl scrambled to her feet in an effort to get away, but Mukuro's mother caught her and hit her, sending her stumbling back against the wall.

The next events played out like a dream as her mother turned to Hiei, approaching him with slow, deliberate steps. She drew back to strike him as well, but a millisecond later, he was standing behind her, looking just as confused by the movement as she.

In her momentary disorientation, Hiei darted to the slave girl and lifted her from the floor. With the girl in his arms, he headed for the door, but was stopped there by the gaggle of guards blocking his way. They grabbed at him, easily tearing the distraught girl from his arms and restraining Hiei as though he were nothing.

Mukuro's mother came into view again, and as she approached she said, "Regardless of what you've been led to believe, you cannot leave this place. You are mine now."

"No! I don't want to be here anymore!" Hiei shouted at her.

"I don't care," the woman said bluntly. "What I do care about is the trouble you've caused me. And as payment for it, I'll be taking this."

And then she did the unthinkable—she reached out a hand and grabbed onto the remaining gem around Hiei's neck.

Then from Hiei's person there was an explosion of light as the power of his fire came to life.

The guards exploded almost simultaneously; her mother fell, and so did Hiei. Glass shattered. Screams and cries pierced the air, presumably from the girl's mouth.

Mukuro's breath hitched. The robots around her began to scramble in confusion and Mukuro swiftly took advantage, batting away her captors. There was another explosion somewhere. She fled from the room and raced to the next, flinging open the door.

But Hiei wasn't there.

It was empty, except for the flames, and . . .

Her mother.

Mukuro's mother writhed on the ground, the fire engulfing her, eating away at her flesh with tongues of rage.

Mukuro could finally take her revenge. She could end this woman's life, the life of the bitch who had tried to end hers.

She reached down to her mother's throat, the flames biting at her, and took Hiei's tear gem.

Then she patted out the flames that crawled on her shirt and ran out.

—.—

Where _was_ he?

Mukuro darted through the halls, calling his name. Then she remembered he had told her he was someone else, and might not respond. She couldn't remember what he had told her his name was.

It occurred to her to remember where she was so they could escape, and she paused, racking her brain.

Robots entered the hall, obviously not willing to allow that.

"Shit," she cursed, screaming Hiei's name again as she fled the mechanical monsters. "Where are you!"

Mukuro rounded a corner and finally saw him, holding the injured slave girl in his arms, looking as lost as she felt. "Hiei!" she gasped in relief, running toward him. "Come with me, there're robots on our ass!"

He eyed her for one hesitant second where her heart clenched, then he gave a quick nod. Mukuro turned and ran.

Her mind worked as she led him, trying to conjure memory of the halls in her mind. The flames were spreading, and the crackle of explosions echoed in her ears.

Finally the tunnel loomed ahead, and she darted toward it—

_BOOM._

The ground rattled, and Mukuro winced as the ceiling toppled ahead of them, dust flying and flames leaping.

"Was that the way out?" Hiei asked feebly.

"Yeah." Mukuro swallowed hard. "We'll find another one."

As the guards continued toward them, Hiei turned to her. "What do we do?" he asked, a foreign desperation in his tone.

"Try the other way." She raced off toward the lot of them, which had congregated across the width of the hall, creating a barricade to block the path. Undeterred, Mukuro darted through with little difficulty, yelling back at Hiei to follow.

He hesitated before going after her, easily dodging the grabbing arms of the attackers, and together they navigated the mess of halls until they came to a large set of stone steps—so tall that were it not for the traces of visible light at the top of them, Mukuro would doubt they ended at all.

They climbed and climbed.

And when they reached the top, they passed through an open exit, and Mukuro was temporarily blinded by the light of day.

Then when her vision cleared, her stomach sank at what she saw before her, but it was no less than she had expected.

The field of flowers.

Mukuro looked at Hiei and tightened her lips. "You'll have to run as fast as you can and get through this field. These flowers are poison. Hurry!"

He looked at her with some hesitation but at her urging, he sped off into the plains.

Mukuro watched him go for a moment before she herself began to tread through.

The field seemed to stretch on forever. As she ran her muscles trembled with exhaustion, and it finally became obvious to her how truly tired she was—barely having eaten or slept, fighting for her life and Hiei's, losing him, losing herself. The flowers dizzied her, and her mind slowed. The field spun in a haze, dream-like.

Would she make it through? Would she see him on the other side?

Somehow the world became still, and she didn't have to move anymore.

Her thoughts swirled into each other.

_Hiei . . . Cry . . . Slave . . . Flower . . . Blood . . ._

She wanted to sleep. She was so comfortable. Was she already asleep?

She was floating in the air now, and the sensation of something firm surrounded her, not like the fluffiness before. Red eyes, a black cloud danced in front of her. She smiled.

—.—

A blank void.

Nothing.

Then Mukuro was slowly pulled from it, like a fly pulled out of molasses. She liked where she was, and groaned, filled with an intense desire to return to the soothing emptiness. She didn't want to feel.

Suddenly Mukuro became aware. Light registered on her eyes, and they flicked around in confusion. The air was warm. Her body was sore.

Someone was touching her.

She jumped with a tiny gasp, drawing back a fist on instinct with the intention of hitting whoever it was. Then her vision focused, and she stopped herself.

For a moment she was filled with such joy, though she wasn't entirely sure why. Then she remembered she had lost him, and now here he was. Then she remembered she had already found him. She remembered he had forgotten her.

The heaviness of her heart and the ache of her muscles returned.

Mukuro was leaned against a tree, next to the slave girl that Hiei had rescued. Hiei himself must have roused her, if his hand on her shoulder was any indication. The Plains of Shadow were just nearby, but they were far enough away that the toxins seemed to lose most of their effect.

Then Mukuro remembered something else and staggered to her feet with a hoarse outcry. She had to go back in before it was gone.

Hiei's sword. She had tossed it in the flowers before she went underground, so it would be safe, and no would-be thieves would venture near. Mukuro leaped into the branches of the tree and attempted to decipher their location.

"What is it?" Hiei asked.

"Your sword's in there. I'm going to get it. Just wait here a minute."

The robots were spreading faster through the fields than she would have liked. She must have been asleep for a good chunk of time.

Mukuro jumped down and raced into the field as discreetly as possible. The sword wasn't too far in, and she had memorized the location before she left it. When at last she obtained it, the robots were drawing even nearer, and she returned to Hiei coughing and just a little frantic.

"Can't rest yet. They're close. We need to get out of this area as fast as we can." Mukuro eyed the slave girl, whose bleeding had stopped, but she still seemed to be unconscious. As much as she didn't want to say it, she went on, "And if you want her to stay alive, we'll need to bring her somewhere safe and patch her up."

They made their way into the forest, Hiei again carrying the girl, though neither of them looked well off. He was also painfully paranoid—a twig snapped nearby and he tensed; a bird squawked, and he looked upwards, almost tripping over his own feet in the process.

Then there was a high-pitched scream, and while Mukuro tensed, Hiei practically jumped out of his skin, wailing as he fell backwards and dropping the slave girl from his arms. He fell against a tree trunk and looked about himself in a panic, and it took him a moment to realize that the horrible shriek had not come from an attacker, but from the girl's mouth.

The girl lifted herself from the ground, quivering uncontrollably and pointing her small hand toward him. "M-monster," the girl stuttered, taking a step backwards and bumping into Mukuro.

The girl turned and looked up at her, promptly uttering a cry even more jarring than the last before running off in the other direction, disappearing into the brush.

Hiei made to follow her, but was stopped by Mukuro's metal hand wrapped firmly about his arm.

"Don't."

He turned and looked up at her. "But she won't make it," he said. "She doesn't know where she's going!"

"If she is afraid enough to make a commotion around us, she's better off alone," Mukuro said. "And we're better off without her."

They continued on in silence, Hiei occasionally turning this way or that, nervously searching for the sources to each noise the forest made and, by the look on his face, assuming the worst. Mukuro did not let go of his arm until they reached a small clearing in the thick expanse of trees and foliage.

It was almost dark and Mukuro could feel the temperature dropping, so out of habit she began piling small branches and pieces of wood in front of him. She knelt down next to the pile and cast him a brief, vainly hopeful glance before looking down again and working to set the wood alight.

"We can find something to eat in the morning, then continue on," she said, lying on the ground nearby.

"Do you think she's okay?" Hiei asked her.

Mukuro did not answer. She couldn't; she didn't know, and it wouldn't matter anyway.

It was a long time before Mukuro could say either of them were relaxed enough to fall asleep.

—.—

The morning came without interruption.

Mukuro was thankful for the rest, which helped ease her physical pains ten-fold, although in contrast it only made her emotional ones more clear.

She stirred, noting the smell of grass, a welcome relief from the sickening smell of the flowers that made her head ache. Her eyes darted around the clearing, and her heart leaped in her throat to discover that Hiei was not there.

Gone, again.


	12. A Flood Named Aftermath

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter twelve**  
><strong>"A Flood Named Aftermath"

* * *

><p>The moment he opened his eyes, Hiei was suffocating in feelings, the very foundation of his existence seeming to collapse on top of him. Vivid images filled his mind, flooding his consciousness with tastes and smells that seemed so real. . . .<p>

But they couldn't possibly be.

He sat up with a start, eyes wild and uncomprehending. His nails dug painfully into the ground as he, all at once, comprehended everything.

His sword was there. That was all he needed. He took it and left.

The forest was far from tame—sharp grass and twigs stabbed his bare feet.

He didn't care.

Branches and thorns scratched and scraped at his body.

It didn't matter.

One sideways jerk of his arm, and he sliced the trunk of a tree with his sword. He cut through a sapling, imagining it was the head of that whore.

He lost control, chopping mercilessly at anything and everything around him. The weapon felt right in his hand, like every jumbled, complicated part of himself focused into one deadly point.

Then, through his blind tirade, he saw her.

And he stopped.

Mukuro was watching him intently, and at the sight of her there, a sickening wave of heat washed over him.

Shame.

Such an unusual feeling—but it was so immense now that he would have rather endured the pain of having his body torn apart limb from limb than to let that despicable emotion swallow him up.

Hiei hurled his sword to the side, not caring where it landed or what it impaled in the process.

"What are you staring at?" he snarled. Then, louder: "Do you find me entertaining?"

With a roar of outrage, he ran at her, and Mukuro was unable to dodge in time, surprise and awareness flickering briefly on her face before she was sent stumbling back by the force of his fist.

"Hiei!" she cried out as he lunged at her again.

But he did not stop.

His fists could communicate far more than his words ever could. With every hit, he desperately prayed for his confidence to return, that steely self-control he had always had over himself, since the day he was brought into this despicable world—the feeling that he was strong enough to never be manipulated or abused. It was such an important part of him, essential to who he was—the solid foundation he was built on.

But it had been cracked now. He couldn't see himself clearly anymore. And Mukuro . . .

There was no way to know what _she_ saw. He had never needed to know before, but now . . .

She quickly gained control, and suddenly his fists were smacking against her palms instead of her face, but still he did not falter. This was an effort to prove himself to her. He needed to be convinced that it was all the same as before, but a new kind of rage boiled inside of him—a rage fueled by something he hated most of all.

Hiei feared that moment he stopped attacking, he would crumble to bits, and it was the last thing he ever wanted to do in front of her.

His blows grew increasingly weak and inaccurate. Mukuro caught one of his wrists, then the other. He tried to pull his hands away but found he hadn't the strength, and that just made him angrier.

"Dammit!" he shouted at her face. He shouted it over and over again until his voice was hoarse. His arms finally went limp in her hold.

He closed his eyes, and the images danced in his mind with disturbing clarity. He tried to glare at her but couldn't bring himself to it. Now that he was standing still, his entire body felt unbalanced and weak from the weight of realization: He had failed her, but more importantly, he had failed himself.

"Mukuro," he said quietly. "Tell me that it wasn't real. . . ."

She let go of his arms and turned her back to him.

"Look at me," he ordered, though his voice was unsteady and rough from strain. "I can handle whatever you have to say." He hesitated. "I'm not the pathetic creature that bitch made me into."

This was different. She had not behaved this way in the past—no matter what, she faced him straight-on, pounding her feelings into him if need be. She wouldn't reject him now, _couldn't_ reject him.

He needed to be accepted by her. He wanted to know that she wanted him, in what ever strange way it was that they wanted each other, and that she trusted him, like he trusted her—as far as either of them was capable of trusting.

When finally she turned to look at him, her cheek was wet. Then she buried her face in her hands, and all that Hiei had been feeling was choked off in an instant.

A memory of tears running down her face in the tunnel of the slave compound flickered in his mind. That was the first time he had ever seen her cry, and he had not even been himself then.

"Idiot," Hiei said, grabbing her hands and pulling them from her face. "I told you to look at me." Holding her flesh hand, he felt the slickness of her palm beneath his fingertips, and it scared him, even more than the thought of losing her.

Mukuro was not supposed to cry.

"I . . ." He paused and closed his eyes, exhausted. "I'm sorry." He took one step closer and buried his face in her shoulder.

She put her arms around him. Hiei felt the warmth of her breath on his scalp and knew that he was not alone.

—.—

A river snaked wildly through the terrain, and Mukuro led him to it, the entire time Hiei hardly able to stifle his relief at the sight of the two tear gems now resting together against his chest. Mukuro had miraculously salvaged the second and given it to him in the forest, and it made the weight of events less painful to bear.

It was not until Mukuro began to remove her clothes that he came to realize just how much he smelled like that wretched place, and his anger returned.

He would scrub every trace of that bitch off of him.

* * *

><p>Hiei was back—the Hiei she had always known—and that revelation had even brought her to tears. A part of her had been so terrified and so sure that things could never return to the way they were, and despite how much she knew she needed to be strong for him, the joy she felt had corroded all her restraint.<p>

But she had given him his stone in return for his understanding of that, and now . . . they could share happiness for a while.

Mukuro had just removed her clothes and immersed her ankles in the water when Hiei whisked past her, a snarl tearing from his throat.

"Hi—" she began in surprise, but stopped herself. What could have angered him? Surely her bringing him here hadn't. That wouldn't make any sense.

But Mukuro's stomach twisted anyway. As Hiei began to scour the dirt off of his person, she stepped into the water, slowly closing the distance between them before she stopped a foot away.

"Hiei," she murmured, trembling as the cold water lapped at her skin.

"_What?_" He did not bother to look up, so absorbed in washing himself that the word ground out of him. For whatever reason, she couldn't bring herself to move.

He scrubbed and scrubbed, until finally he realized that she was still watching him, and he turned to her and asked irritably, "How long do you intend to stand there before you wash yourself? Or were you expecting me to do it for you?"

And something made her heart clench. It shouldn't have been like that—she should have brushed it off, glared at him. But the feeling pumped painfully through her veins, and her hand clamped into a fist as she turned away. She couldn't face it—face him—anymore.

She had to fight this feeling. But it only became the water she rubbed onto her skin—cold and unbearable.

There was a moment in which she could feel his eyes on her back.

"We should hurry," he commented. "You're going to freeze."

"Mm," Mukuro replied, her throat too tight to speak, her chest pumping another jolt of pain into her body.

She didn't want to feel it anymore. She didn't want to be here like this—but she couldn't seem to close the distance between them.

Mukuro had forgotten how much she was shaking, pushed out of her mind by the emotions that crowded her. Hiei was right—she should hurry, but her hands were barely moving, as if in slow motion.

_Damn,_ hadn't she suffered enough in the past days? Hadn't they both suffered enough? Were they that intent on making themselves suffer even more?

Mukuro's hands fell away from her body and she whipped around to look at him again. "Hiei," she started, but she didn't know what she was going to say.

For a moment she simply stared at him, her brows knitted, and then she asked, "Are you okay?"

At first, he looked away, and she thought he wasn't going to answer her. But then he said, "What a silly question. I'm not dead yet."

And the words made her smile.

It was so like him to say something like that, and it comforted her.

"I'm glad for that," she blurted honestly, then awkwardly turned back to her washing. "I don't know . . . what I'd do if you were."

"Don't belittle yourself," he said. "It isn't flattering on you, and I don't appreciate the sentiment."

It was what he said, but there was little of his normally scathing tone, and something about that made Mukuro pause.

She heard him curse and hit the water's surface.

It was obvious then that he was struggling.

Mukuro didn't know what to say. There was nothing she _could_ say to make anything better, but she couldn't stand and do nothing.

She found herself nearing him as he had done to her earlier, wrapping her arms around him for the second time, her body pressed against his back.

"Don't," she whispered, unsure what she was telling him not to do.

He stiffened but did not move away. For what seemed like an eternity, he was still and quiet. Then, in a whisper soaked in hateful bitterness, he said, "She touched me."

The shock took hold of each of her limbs, and Mukuro felt suddenly sick to be holding him. She nearly jerked herself away, but she gathered herself just enough to release him more slowly, backing off.

What had she been thinking? What—_what_—

His words drilled into her brain, and she didn't want to be here at all. She didn't want to know that could be true. She didn't want to share that pain. She didn't want to feel so disgusted with herself.

Disgusted and hurt—for him.

She tugged at her hair, groping aimlessly for some way to quell the ache that now took permanent residence in her chest.

She had no idea what to say to him. She wouldn't know what to say to herself. She never did.

The word 'no' rested on her lips but she couldn't find the strength to voice it.

It was all too much to bear.

"Forget it," he said, back still to her. "It doesn't matter."

"No!" she cried out. A million things erupted in her mind, things she almost let slip off her tongue, but none of them seemed right.

She didn't want to think of it—but this wasn't about her.

What could she say? Do? How could she help him? What had ever helped her?

He had.

But she couldn't be him—nothing, none of it made sense. Who—what—were they now?

Unbidden, the liquid welled in her eyes again—tears she could never bear to shed for herself—and it only made her angry. Tears weren't how she functioned. Crying wouldn't make her feel any better. Blood had always been the replacement. But there was no blood left to shed now, and all her blows could not be focused on anyone but herself.

"No, I can't just forget," she said, and the words burned her throat. "I'm—"

"You're _what_?" he asked, facing her. "_Sorry_?" As he looked at her, his expression changed. "You _idiot_!" he said, voice rising with every word. "What good will _that_ do? I don't want your tears or your damn sympathy!"

His words cut her sharper than any sword. She wanted to hurt him, because it was all she knew how to do, but she couldn't bring herself to.

Not like this. Not now.

But she needed to get away, or else she didn't know what she would do.

The brush whipped at her—but she did not matter. What happened to her did not matter.

Death would be more merciful than this—this place of pain with no solution. Not even blood.

Nothing was left. Nothing but the forest floor, digging into her arm, stifling the air that already hurt to breathe and tearing the terrible noises from her throat as she beat her fist into it again and again.

—.—

The world was small, quiet, and a little less painful than before.

It was so strange how alone one could feel for so long and yet still have something left to feel pain with when alone again.

Mukuro sat beneath a tall tree, at the center of a patch of destruction, her head buried in her knees, body still.

She didn't know how long it had been, but no idea she had thought of was better than the last. Nothing seemed like a suitable fix.

She had run away like a coward, though he was the one who should have been in pain. How pathetic she had become now.

"Hn. Pathetic," his voice out of nowhere agreed.

It was then that she knew.

Mukuro was still a moment before she stood and ran at him, aiming her fist at his face.

She wanted him to hate her. It was easier than trying to fix something that couldn't be repaired.

—.—

There was a split-second of opportunity in which Hiei might have dodged the blow. But, for whatever reason, he did not, and so she crushed her knuckles into his face again and again.

When the blows subsided momentarily, he stumbled back into a tree trunk, steadying himself.

"Is that all?" he sneered. "If it is, I'm severely disappointed."

He was an idiot. But this felt familiar. It felt somehow safe, like an old dance they had performed many times before on better days than this.

She pulled her arm back to strike him again. But then, surprisingly, he had gone, and as she made to find him, her legs were kicked out from under her.

She rolled and threw her fist instinctively, and their punches landed almost simultaneously.

How had he managed to best her so easily? But the answer was obvious—she was slipping. Slipping far.

Hiei delivered a series of blows to her face, a few grazing her skin but most of them blocked completely, and in the next instant, she had flipped them over, returning the treatment with a much higher success rate.

But he struggled, and as he did, the two of them began to roll, alternatively pinning each other down to the ground and wildly throwing punches at every opportunity.

This felt good.

Mukuro wasn't sure why, but it did.

It was better than trying to reason with him—Hiei was unreasonable anyway. She had been so tense, so scared, and even though it had all been for him, fighting him now gave her so much pleasure.

She really was messed up, she decided.

"Come on, you bitch!" he shouted through the blur of fists and flesh, egging her on. "You can hit me harder than that!" She acceded to his request, gaining some strange satisfaction at the sound he made when her fist struck his body. He wanted this, too. It was stupid and pointless but they both wanted to beat each other because it was the only way they knew how to disentangle themselves from this web of emotions they were struggling in.

And she felt so much . . .

She was exhausted, filled with a sudden foreign emotion that only he seemed to be able to pull from her rotten depths.

She was so scared because she needed him.

Eventually their frenzy of fists slowed, and Hiei sat panting on top of Mukuro, blood running from his face. Then he closed his eyes and fell onto his back on the ground next to her.

Mukuro was so tired, so bitter at everything. This wasn't a fix. This was only a temporary reprieve. It didn't change anything. It just made them hurt physically.

But then, from nowhere, she felt his hand on her bare hip, his fingers resting lightly on the skin there, and something in her chest fluttered. How could he be so gentle after causing her so much pain? How could he even want to touch her at all?

He coughed several times, and then he said, voice hoarse, "I would have done the same for you."

Everything painful suddenly numbed, flooded with the strangest idea that Hiei had just instilled in her.

He would have done the same for her.

Mukuro's hand trembled as she lifted it to cover his, holding him softly against her as she rolled to press her body to his, finding comfort with her face buried in his neck, swallowed by his scent and warmth. His fingers found her hair and the sensation tingled pleasantly, luring a small sound from her throat as she shifted her hand, resting it on his chest while she fashioned herself closer to him.

For some time, they simply lay there, bloody, bruised, dirty, and exhausted—but together.

Then Hiei said, "There are fish in the river," and, in mutual acknowledgement of their own vulnerability and the dangers of their surroundings, they abandoned the brief moment of peace in favor of a meal.

—.—

Hiei found his sword in the forest and used the blade to catch and flay two large fish. They bathed and dressed—as far as was possible, in Hiei's case—and he and Mukuro sat across from each other on the bank, devouring the cooked meat in a companionable silence.

"It will take us at least three days to reach the fortress from here," she said.

"That's fine for you. But I don't intend to return there just yet."

Mukuro sent him a look of mild disbelief. "What are you saying?"

"I'm not asking you to accompany me," he said. "You're free to do as you please."

"Of course I'm not going to leave you here," she shot at him. Not after she had only just gotten him back, and they were still in the midst of danger. "What are you planning on doing?"

"I'm going to give those bastards what they deserve."

Mukuro saw the darkness fill his eyes, and it pained her to see it there. There was no way they could leave until he resolved it.

She opened her mouth to assure him she would go with him, but before she could begin, a rustle in the trees caught her attention.

Four robots emerged from the foliage, and Mukuro jumped to her feet. "Run!" She took off, hearing a growl behind her before Hiei was at her side.

"Coward!" he yelled at her. "We could have beaten them!"

"I won't see you blown up again and there might be more coming!"

They ran until they could no longer hear their pursuers, then stopped and looked behind them.

"How should we kill those things?" Hiei asked after a moment. "I assumed you would know."

"There's no particularly good way that I know of. But there might be someone we could ask."


	13. On the Bound

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter thirteen**  
><strong>"On The Bound"

* * *

><p>Hiei and Mukuro navigated the forest, vigilant for any sign that the robots might be catching up. It was clear that with their earlier burst of speed, they had managed to gain a great deal of ground, though neither of them was willing to believe that after this much time, the mechanized demons would cease their pursuit.<p>

As the forest terrain became more treacherous—dense thorny bramble and sharp tree roots riddling the way—Hiei found himself taking greater care to avoid obstacles. He was still traveling barefoot, and although he would never admit as much to Mukuro, it was beginning to take its toll on him.

He tried his best to block out the pain in the bottoms of his feet, instead blaming that red-haired, kimono-wearing bimbo for taking his clothes from him in the first place. He used his hazy mental image of her as a constant, driving motivation in his quest to obliterate that insufferable slave camp from existence.

Needless to say, when they exited the forest, Hiei was in a bad mood. They entered a small valley, located beneath a massive hill—the top of which was not visible at low altitude.

Hiei felt vulnerable here, standing in such plain sight, but he pushed his reservations aside and continued alongside Mukuro.

They reached a scrap-yard of sorts, and after a quick surveillance of her surroundings, she began to lead them both through the piles of metal and odd-looking contraptions, many of which were rusted and some of which glinted in the light in a way that made them appear to be moving.

Hiei lurched backwards when a metallic, worm-like creature inched into his path. "Shit!" he yelled in surprise, preparing to draw his sword when Mukuro walked over and crushed the small object under her heel.

"It can't hurt you," she said.

"Of course it can't!" he snapped indignantly. "It would be a fool to try!"

He caught sight of the small smirk on her face, though she turned away too quickly for him to call her on it.

Mukuro made her way around several piles of scraps and garbage, approaching a grayish, weather-damaged shack.

"Shun!" she shouted, walking up to the door. "Come out! We need to talk!"

They waited for a minute or so, but received no response.

She tried again. "Shun! Open up!"

Hiei glanced at her in annoyance, then back at the door.

"Shun!" she called.

Hiei raised his fist, and before she could stop him, slammed it into the door, then quickly drew it back from the wood with a hiss of pain.

"Bad idea," she commented just before a muffled voice was heard within.

"All right, no need to get violent!"

The door swung open, revealing the thick layer of solid metal on the other side of the wood that had resisted Hiei's fist.

Mukuro stepped in first, Hiei close behind.

"There's my beauty!" he heard as a short man ascended a set of stairs into the room, his eyes alighting on Mukuro—or, to be more precise, her mechanical arm—and he immediately ran over and slid up her sleeve, inspecting her metal limb. He was small—shorter than Hiei—his face covered in a gray beard and his belly extending far past his waistline.

"So what's the problem?" he asked, sliding a pair of spectacles up his nose.

"No problem," said Mukuro.

"Of course not!" The old man chuckled for a moment, then looked at her. "Oh. Well, why are you here?"

"Those robots in the forest," Mukuro began. "I want to destroy them."

Shun lifted his furry eyebrows, dragging her over to a desk where he plopped into a chair to continue his tinkering with her arm. "Ever the conqueror, eh?"

"This is for personal reasons. But the point is, I need a way to destroy them without causing them to explode."

"Well, there's always a failsafe to get 'em to reboot or shut down for these kinds of things, especially AI like those. Usually a word. But then the problem is finding out the word," he told her, squinting at a wire in her forearm.

"Is there any other method than a word?"

"Hmm," Shun considered. "If the mechanic's smart." He leaned back in his chair, then for the first time, locked eyes Hiei. "Oh! Is he yours?"

Then Mukuro looked at him and smiled for a second. "Yeah, he's mine."

The inside of Hiei's chest tingled, but he quickly cast the feeling aside.

"It's funny," the old man was saying to Mukuro, "I wouldn't have you pegged as the motherly type."

"Don't patronize me," Hiei snapped.

"He's quite spirited, too," the man continued. "Though I suppose I couldn't expect any less from someone choosing to keep your company." The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled at Mukuro in a fond sort of way. "Do you take him around dressed like this often, or is it a rare occurrence?"

"We've had several unfortunate encounters with those robots," Mukuro explained.

"I see," said Shun, but then he looked confused. "You mean to say those machines were after you? How very odd. To my knowledge, they're only programmed to track escaped slaves."

"How?" Mukuro urged. "How does the tracking work?"

Leaning back in his chair a bit, then man stroked his beard in contemplation. "I'm afraid what I have to say won't be of much help to you," he said. "But since you came all this way to ask, maybe it'd be easier to show you instead."

With some difficulty, he rose from his chair and made his way over to the wooden flight of stairs that disappeared into the floor at the edge of the room, stopping at the top step and gesturing for them to follow.

Below the ground, in the cold, crowded basement, the air was filled with the hum of electric lights. Fluorescent brightness stung at Hiei's eyes as he surveyed his surroundings carefully, in awe at the trinkets and half-built machine parts covering the numerous tables spaced close together on the floor.

In one corner, he spied a simple white cot, and next to it was a closed door.

It was all very cluttered and strange, and the three of them had to walk between the tables single-file, the old man leading the way and Hiei at the rear.

"Watch your step," Shun warned them good-naturedly, after Hiei had already narrowly avoided stepping on several sharp-looking objects in his path.

He once again turned his eyes to the cot, walking more closely behind Mukuro as memories of his time in captivity swam before his eyes, paranoia making him impatient to leave.

Something metallic lurched next to him as he passed, and on instinct, Hiei drew his sword and sliced through it.

That section of the table promptly caved, all its contents crashing to the floor.

For a moment, Hiei stood staring at the mess, his breathing labored and his eyes murderously wide. He reaffirmed his hold on his sword, then stored the weapon at his side again.

He might have said something, but the weight of sudden shame kept his gaze on his feet.

"Oh, that's all right," Shun said suddenly, breaking the silence. "I don't work with what I do 'cause it breaks easy," he chuckled, and continued to lead them between the tables. "But I promise they won't hurt you. They're not junk after all!"

The old man walked over to a desk and yanked open a drawer, sifting through the contents before drawing out a plastic bag and dangling it before them.

"This," he announced, tapping the bag, "is a slave tracking device."

Mukuro leaned in closer and stared at the bag, and Hiei could just make out a small electronic chip that sat in one corner. "What? How does it work?"

"I found this particular one in you, under your ear." Mukuro's eye widened as he gestured at the scarred side of her face. "When I was giving you that arm." He dragged a chair from nearby and sat. "I didn't tell you then, because it wouldn't do you any good to know in the condition you were in. But I suppose your injury disabled it, because it seems to be warped."

Hiei and Mukuro simply stared at the bag in his hand for several long moments.

"I've taken several out of slaves in the past. They're made out of a metal that corresponds with the robots, and it gives off a sort of signal."

He felt behind his right ear and, feeling only his hair, reached behind his left. Still nothing. His blood chilled, and everything around him was suddenly reduced to a blur of panic.

The next thing he knew, he had grabbed a fistful of the old man's collar and lifted him partway off the chair. "Remove it!" Hiei shouted at his face. "Find it and remove it from me! _Now_!"

"Hiei!" Mukuro cried behind him.

"I would," Shun replied quickly, "but they stopped putting chips in slaves years ago."

Hiei relinquished his hold, and the old man rubbed his neck with relief. "Whatever they're tracking them with now, I haven't got a clue—possibly something in the bloodstream, something they can't remove." Shun shot Mukuro a knowing glance. "I guess that explains why he's in your company." He turned and dropped the bag back into the drawer, sliding it closed, and faced them again with a key in his hand.

"This is the only help I can offer you, unfortunately. It unlocks a door in the factory where they make the robots." He straightened his spectacles. "But it's been so long, I don't remember what. Must be to a door I used when I worked there, which didn't last long. Let's just say we had a difference of opinions."

"Don't bother," Hiei cut in. "We can break into any doors to get the information."

Mukuro cast him a sidelong glance. "I wouldn't be so sure about that, what with the damage Shun's front door did to your hand. Who's to say the doors in the factory won't be the same?" Hiei narrowed his eyes at her, but didn't argue the point.

Mukuro took the key and observed it for a moment. "So where is this factory, assuming we can find the use of this key?"

"North of here, but the direct route isn't the best," Shun answered. "You'd be less likely seen by anything living if you take the hills. I can give you some hardware that masks your identity amongst any AI, makes them recognize you as one of them. Well, last time I tested it."

"Great."

"And also," Shun said, "I think your friend there needs some clothes."

—.—

The old man told him where he kept a spare set of clothing, and Hiei, begrudgingly, traveled upstairs to find it. He dressed himself in a shirt and pants that were too large, then took a moment to observe the meager furnishings of the shack, arriving at the top of the staircase again and pausing for a moment to listen to the mingling voices of Mukuro and the man as they yammered on.

Then, when eavesdropping became boring, he migrated to a dusty corner near a shelf of books and seated himself in it, resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes.

When he was jostled from slumber some time later by a pair of arms lifting him from the ground, he almost panicked—before he recognized her scent and knew that he was safe.

The last thing Hiei knew before he surrendered himself entirely to sleep was the sound of Mukuro's breathing as he nuzzled into the hollow of her neck.

—.—

They awoke on Shun's bed, entangled in each others' arms, and remained still for some time, something about the circumstances inspiring them to revel in the peace for just a while longer.

Then reality took hold again and they left just as quietly.

Hiei was fully dressed, but the only article of clothing on his person that even remotely resembled his usual wardrobe was a pair of black pants. This particular pair, unsurprisingly, was too big, and even with his belts pulled as tight as they were able, the waistline inched downwards further and further as he walked.

It was really beginning to piss Hiei off.

As he and Mukuro made their way to the top of a particularly steep hill, Hiei tugged at the too-long sleeves of his too-red shirt. A part of him felt that he would be better off without the change of clothes, though the new pair of shoes was a relief.

He felt better, safer, in the open air, though even now he feared that robots would appear over the hillside at any moment.

After several hours of walking, they found themselves entering another valley, this one deeper than the last and cradled between the hills and a small mountain, where a large, industrial facility emerged from the base.

Hiei and Mukuro made their way down the slope of the hill, skirting nearer toward the side of the building, searching out an entrance. He had to continually remind himself that simply making their own door would defeat the purpose of being so cautious in their approach.

Then, suddenly, Mukuro said, "Look," and when Hiei followed her gaze, he spotted a large opening, hidden in shadow, several yards away. They ventured toward it in silence, but before they had reached their destination, an odd humming noise filled the air, followed by the scraping and grinding of mechanized gears, and a wave of robots poured out of the entry way.

The way the light glinted off of every angle of the creatures' frames caused Hiei to take a step back, a step that he immediately regretted—

But he had no time, for Mukuro darted into the swarm and he could do nothing but follow, until they were engulfed, lost together in an abyss of manufactured beasts.

—.—

It was a mechanical nightmare.

Things could be ugly without the device Shun had given them to mask their presence, which seemed to make them effectively invisible to the ridiculous quantity of robotic monsters that Mukuro and Hiei were weaving through.

Finally being inside was no better. It felt as though they were in a _sea_ of robots, all of which seemed to be turned off. In the back of the huge room, more cybernetic beasts were coming in through a hole in the wall. They caught a glimpse of someone moving amongst the labyrinth and swiftly hid behind their own separate robots.

Hiei took the moment to open his Jagan, using it to ascertain the floor plan of the building.

There were several living demons in the room that appeared to be inspecting the robots, and avoiding them wasn't very difficult—their senses were clearly sub-standard.

When they were close to the back of the room, Hiei saw someone enter the room from an adjacent hallway—which would likely be their best bet at finding the room that held the information they sought. One glance at Mukuro and a quick nod said she confirmed his assumption, and at the next opportunity, they worked their way across the room and into the hall.

They glanced around themselves. The hall continued in one direction, and rose to stairs in the other, and Hiei did not hesitate in choosing the way, using his clairvoyance to guide Mukuro upwards to the next floor.

—.—

The stairwell stretched from the ground floor to the sixth level of the building. Hiei stopped at the platforms of each floor and took a moment to sift through the images swimming in his mind before confirming that they could glean no useful information from that level and leading Mukuro up the next flight of stairs. On the sixth floor, they arrived at a closed set of large double doors.

Hiei tugged at the handles, but both appeared to be locked.

"There's no keyhole," Mukuro murmured, and he growled in frustration at the electronic access panel. The security measures on this floor only heightened his suspicion that this was the part of the building they needed to be in.

Upon closer examination of the doors, he found six metal hinges visible along the sides of the entryway.

"We don't need a keyhole," Hiei decided aloud, and knelt, pushing back his sleeves and touching his hands lightly to the lower left-hand hinge. As he transferred more of his energy into the metal, it began to glow orange, losing its shape as it softened and finally melted to the floor. He made quick work of the second hinge as well as the bottom-most on the other side, then stepped back to admire his handiwork before frowning up at the final two hinges, which were several inches above his reach.

"Let me help," Mukuro said, as though reading his thoughts. She leaned down and, wrapping her arms tightly around his waist, hoisted his body from the ground. He quickly disposed of the final hinges, and with their combined strength, he and Mukuro pushed through the doors, causing them to fall to the floor with an obnoxious slam.

The hallway was mercifully empty, though within a matter of seconds the sounds of muffled voices became audible through the walls nearby, and Hiei focused again on the images being fed to him by the Jagan.

After minutes of exploring several consecutive halls, Hiei stopped at a comparatively quaint little door, for on the other side were stacks of papers, a large work table, and shelves of books.

He turned to Mukuro. "No one's inside for now," he told her. "Try your key."


	14. Mingle in the Mincing Machine

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter fourteen**  
><strong>"Mingle In The Mincing Machine"

* * *

><p>Mukuro shoved the key in the lock and with a couple experimental twists there was a faint click. The handle finally turned and they slipped in, immediately choosing different stacks of papers to sift through. "We need an in-case-of-emergency thing," Mukuro mumbled. "Construction plans and the like."<p>

They began to weed through the contents of the room. It would be much less difficult finding useful information, Hiei thought, if everything here wasn't unintelligible bullshit.

He found a paper at random and showed it to her, but after a moment of attempting to read it, she merely shook her head. He grumbled and moved to the desk, melting the lock of one of the drawers and yanking it open, then pored over its contents.

"Find something?" Mukuro asked.

"Yes," he said, snatching up the folder within to give her. She flipped it open.

"Yeah," she nodded, inspecting sheet after sheet. "But I still can't figure out exactly what it says."

"We'll ask him," Hiei said, and before Mukuro could inquire what he meant, walked out of the room and cornered the frightened worker ambling about in the hall and snatching him up by his shirt.

"Show him the papers," Hiei said when he sensed Mukuro behind him.

Instead there was a smack of skin as Mukuro caught the demon's wrist, causing him to cry out in fear and drop the wrench he had apparently intended to hit Hiei with.

"Translate," she said and shoved the paper in his face.

The worker did not take the papers from Mukuro, his eyes darting fearfully between her hands and her face. He opened his mouth.

"Call for help and your life ends here," Hiei said.

The demon's eyes widened considerably, and he closed his mouth again.

"Tell us what they say," Mukuro insisted, indicating the papers.

"Do it!" Hiei barked, and the demon stuttered in fright, then focused his eyes on the first sheet.

"I-It's a diagram!"

"Don't be coy with me," said Hiei.

"We know it's a diagram of the robots you're building downstairs," Mukuro added. "Tell us how they work."

"I-I can't tell you that!" he said. "How did you get here, anyway? This floor is off-limits!"

"You're here, aren't you?" Hiei asked.

"W-well, yes, b-but I—"

"Then stop being hypocritical and tell me how to deactivate those machines!"

"Why should it matter if I do?"

"That would depend upon how much you value your life."

The demon visibly trembled in a manner that suggested he might be on the verge of mental collapse. The expression angered Hiei so much that he relinquished hold on his shirt and shoved, sending the accosted worker stumbling back against the wall a few feet away.

"Just describe the deactivation process to us," said Mukuro patiently, though the irritation was still evident in her voice.

"I don't know anything about it! I don't build anything!"

Hiei bent and snatched up the wrench from the floor. "Then what the hell is this for?"

The worker pressed himself against the wall as though endeavoring to become a part of it. "I mean I don't build those parts!" he amended. "Really!"

Mukuro cast Hiei a sidelong glance. "Is he lying?"

A quick search through the worker's mind via Jagan lent a disheartening result. "No," Hiei answered. "He's just an idiot." He glared at the demon, who let out a pathetic whimper of terror.

Hiei promptly stepped forward and administered a rough blow to the side of the worker's head with the wrench, causing him to collapse to the floor in a heap.

"That was unnecessary," commented Mukuro as she and Hiei exited the scene.

"Not my problem," he returned.

They rounded a corner, coming to an abrupt halt as they stared down the hall at the collapsed set of doors and the small group of workers clustering around it.

"Perhaps it would be wise to find another way down," said Mukuro.

They turned and headed in the opposite direction.

Hiei led Mukuro down the hall and paused to explore routes with his Jagan, turning a moment later to find her pinning another worker against the wall by his throat.

When Hiei joined her, she handed the robot-masking device to him so that she could raise her fist before the captured man's face. She lessened the pressure on his throat to ask, "How do you shut these robots down?"

"Y-you're crazy!" he choked out. "I can't tell you that!"

"I don't think you quite grasp your situation," Hiei commented.

The man looked back and forth between Hiei and Mukuro nervously. "Look, if I tell you that, I'll lose everything! I'm making all my money on these things!"

There was a scrape of metal as Hiei dragged his sword from its sheath. "What should I cut off first?" he asked.

There was a moment where he saw the fear in his eyes and the sweat on his skin, and then out of nowhere, a murky smog filled the air between the worker's face and Mukuro's, forcing her backward in a fit of coughing. She swung her fist and landed a sideways blow that was met with a satisfying _crunch_ and scream of pain, but before Hiei could silence him, the man called for security.

Wasting no time, Hiei snatched up Mukuro's arm and led her toward another set of stairs, this set small and near the back of the building. The door was mercifully unlocked, and he swiftly led Mukuro through it, pausing briefly on the top landing as he heard voices echoing at the base of the stairwell.

With a frown, he turned back to look at Mukuro, who was in the process of clearing her face of whatever black smog she had been attacked with.

He waited several seconds until her eye blinked open before tightening his hold on her arm and beginning a descent of the stairs. With his Jagan, he could sense that something was afoot in the building—judging from the way the workers on several floors seemed to be caught in a state of alarm, he could only assume some sort of security switch had been tripped.

At the landing of the third floor, he stopped, let go of Mukuro's arm, and yanked the door open.

Upon entering this floor, Hiei's ears were immediately filled with the loud hum of machinery and his nose was assaulted with the smell of oil and burning metal. Clouds of dust floated in the rays of bright flickering light that filtered from the ceiling.

The floor stopped several yards from the entrance, and he and Mukuro peered down over the iron railing at the massive work area two stories below. It appeared to be a sub-section of the level they had entered on, though on the opposite end of the establishment. Workers bustled back and forth, clustering in groups of two or three as they moved heavy pieces of metal—from this high up, they looked small and insignificant to Hiei.

In the center of the room was a massive machine, the top of which was level with the platform on which Hiei and Mukuro currently stood. Length-wise, it reached across nearly the entire room, stretches of moving conveyor belts comprising assembly lines from its many openings. What exactly it was doing was hard for Hiei to guess, and it was not as though he cared about details anyway. This thing was obviously responsible for the manufacturing of the robots, and that was all he needed to know.

The old man's electronic device still in hand, Hiei hopped up on the thin metal railing and leaped to the top of the machine, surprised at how quickly the heat seeped through the soles of his shoes. The beast's innards heaved and groaned with the stress of whatever task it was performing, and Hiei turned, finding Mukuro directly behind him.

She was unsteady, but she was managing.

Hiei led her to a catwalk nearby, where they vaulted themselves over the rail. They followed the path to stairs which provided an opening into the machine, and he glanced back at Mukuro, making certain she understood his intentions.

He grabbed a searing-hot pipe and crushed it in his hand. Mukuro looked about her before she shoved her hand into a panel of metal, pulling it back before thrusting her hand in to tear out the guts. He drew his sword and began to cut through thick wires, and sparks began to fly.

He heard a strange hissing and creaking erupt around them as the damage began to set in, and they moved amongst the machinery, dislodging and destroying more and more in hopes of permanently disabling it.

"What—" he heard someone bite out and whipped around, slicing through the voice's owner before they could say any more and slicing off the scream of another frightened co-worker.

While Mukuro made short work of several more workers, Hiei raced ahead of her and slung his bloodied sword into more machinery for good measure, and she followed him away from the scene as the mechanism began to shudder in a panic.

Most of the workers that came across their path raced away in a frenzy, and escaping was an easy task until the moment they turned into the room littered with robots, where Hiei was suddenly struck with a most petrifying, uncontrollable terror that left him frozen to the spot.

The next thing he knew, Mukuro had snatched up his arm, and he let out a snarl of both frustration and disgust at himself, tearing away from her and shooting ahead.

Although the robots were plenty, not one of them so much as acknowledged the presence of he and Mukuro as they weaved through the room toward the exit. They did not know he was there.

So why was it that their very presence created a tension in his body that with each passing second drove him closer to panic?

Hiei forged onward, trying as best as he could to stifle the feeling behind a mask of determination.

But as they neared the other end of the room, he sensed quickly that there was a problem. Past the feet of the robots, he could not see any filtering of light out onto the floor, only shadow, and a few more steps confirmed his assumption that what had once served as their entrance was an opening no longer.

A swift glance to the left let him know that Mukuro was beside him once again, and so Hiei stepped nearer to the edge of the door, weighing the probability that this one could be opened by force or by heat.

His thoughts were disrupted by jarring explosion somewhere above them, causing the ground to tremble and the ceiling to shed debris.

"Dammit!"

"Look for another way out," Mukuro urged.

Within a matter of minutes, he located a small side door, and the two of them were racing into the valley as the production plant erupted behind them. They slowed as they reached the top of the first hill, confirming that they were alone before turning to observe the scene unfolding behind them.

Hiei smothered an errant cinder on his sleeve, then on second thought removed his shirt entirely and wiped the blade of his sword clean with it. "What an insufferable waste of space," he said, staring into the distance at the structurally compromised facility.

_Good riddance._


	15. Loose Threads

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter fifteen**  
><strong>"Loose Threads"

* * *

><p>The sun had dipped past the horizon by the time Hiei and Mukuro reached the vicinity of Shun's shack, and the darkness set in as they wandered the forest. They worked together to catch and prepare a deer for a brief meal while they rested, and this period of quiet allowed Hiei to relax and focus on surveying their surroundings with the Jagan.<p>

It was far better than the alternative.

He had only been gazing through the forestry for minutes before saw it, and he leaped to his feet, leaving Mukuro at their makeshift campsite in a moment of sheer impulsiveness.

Hiei raced through the darkened maze of trees, following images in his mind that he could scarcely believe he was acting on, much less that were real.

As he ran further from the campsite, a shrill cry broke the silence of night, and he moved his legs faster, arriving seconds later at a thick tangle of branches. He slashed through the brush with his sword, picking up a fallen limb and setting it alight before hurling it straight ahead of him as hard as he could.

Where it landed was close enough to illuminate the familiar ragged, emaciated slave girl he and Mukuro had rescued from the compound days earlier, her bloody and fear-stricken face, the mouth of the cave she was laying at, as well as the seven-foot-tall terrestrial bird looming over her.

At the sudden introduction of light, the beast squawked in surprise and reared its head back, orange flame reflecting menacingly in its beady black eyes.

Had the situation not been so dire, Hiei might have taken a moment to enjoy the irony of the child having run from himself and Mukuro due to an ill-placed (though perhaps not entirely false) assumption that they were monsters, yet here she was now, about to be torn apart by what appeared to be a giant chicken. But as the creature squawked again and lifted one large, talon-wielding claw into the air and prepared to end its victim's life, Hiei knew that he had little time to spare.

Within seconds he was on top of the bird and soon after had sliced open its neck, taking great care to sever its spinal cord before removing the blade. Enraged, the creature flapped its wings, sending a flurry of black feathers into the air, and Hiei jumped from its back seconds before it fell to the ground, uttering a noise of defeat as it struggled hopelessly in a pool of its own blood.

Hiei smirked as he stowed his sword, then knelt by the girl. If it were possible, she appeared even more disheveled than the last time he had laid eyes on her, and she was now sporting a rather deep set of gashes along the length of her right leg. She let out a wail of terror or despair as he scooped her up in his arms, but clearly lacked the strength to fight him any further than that.

When he stood, he saw deeper in the cave a large nest containing four eggs.

"Idiot girl," he muttered, for her having been stupid enough to make that bird's home her resting spot for the night. Walking away, he heard one last mournful cry from the slain bird, and he felt a darkness in his heart at the fact that the babies in that nest would never survive without their mother—that now they might not even hatch.

The slave girl rested her head against his shoulder.

Immersed in shadow nearby, Mukuro stood quietly, regarding him with a blank, almost unreadable expression—though as Hiei approached, even in the dark of night, he saw the intensity in her eyes as her gaze flickered from the lifeless girl in his arms then back to his face again. He merely stared at her, offering only a grunt as explanation for his actions.

They returned to their campsite in silence, and without any apparent motivation, Mukuro helped him to dress the unconscious girl's wounds with scraps torn from his discarded shirt.

After that, from the base of a tree a short distance away, he waited for Mukuro to fall asleep, his own chest swelling with a strange emotion as he watched her breathing finally relax to a slow and steady rhythm. When the embers of the fire had almost died out, Hiei found himself lying down at her side, far enough from her so as to prevent any startled awakenings during the night, but close enough so that he could draw from her presence the comfort that would lead him, too, to slumber.

* * *

><p>Mukuro had a strange dream of many slave girls, and Hiei was there in the midst. She was confused at his presence, trying to make sense of it all, when suddenly something caused her to stir, pulling her out of her dream. She jumped a tiny bit when her lidless eye sent her the image of someone's face very close to hers, then blinked rapidly as she processed it.<p>

It was Hiei.

His breath ghosted warmly over her face while he slept. Something about finding him there made a smile tug at her mouth, and she found she was suddenly fighting the very strange urge to press her lips against his.

Mukuro sat up slowly to survey their surroundings when she caught sight of the slave girl, who was sitting nearby, staring anxiously at them. It was at that moment that Mukuro's dream came back to her, and she frowned in thought, glancing down at Hiei and back.

"Are you hungry?" Mukuro asked.

The girl stared for a long moment, and Mukuro was about to ask again, thinking she hadn't heard her, when finally the girl nodded her head. Mukuro pushed herself to her feet and walked a couple steps to a small pile of pears that she had collected in her shirt the night before, grabbing several, and then moved toward the girl, who pulled her limbs in toward herself protectively.

Mukuro held out a pear, and the girl took it, devouring it quickly, and then she looked back up at Mukuro, who understood and handed her another. After eating this one, the girl finally spoke.

"He saved me last night, didn't he?"

Mukuro glanced at Hiei. "Yeah, he did." At the time Mukuro's mind had flown to thoughts of Kazue, and her chest tightened now at the memory. Mukuro gave the girl another pear. "He doesn't want you to be afraid of him." The girl glanced up. "Neither of us meant to hurt you."

Hiei, who had apparently awoken, got to his feet and made his way over to the two, snatching up the remaining pear from Mukuro's hand and biting into it.

"She'll need much more than this to satisfy her hunger," he decided after a moment, to which Mukuro only nodded.

Hiei finished his pear and tossed the remains into the brush. He looked at the slave girl thoughtfully; she stared back at him in fearful confusion.

"Hn," he finally grunted, then scaled the branches of the tree she was sitting beneath, balancing himself on one of the uppermost branches to apparently observe their surroundings.

The morning breeze blew cool against Mukuro's skin, chilling her as her thoughts did. They couldn't stay in one place for long—the threat of the robots' return was constantly haunting her mind. Mukuro couldn't allow Hiei to be taken from her again.

She would die before she sent him back into that horror.

When Hiei returned to the ground, Mukuro and the slave girl were finishing off the stash of pears, and Mukuro paused as his gaze locked on her person.

"It will take us most of today to reach the compound," he said, then cast a look at the girl before turning to Mukuro, his expression grim. She knew what he was thinking: they couldn't take the girl with them—doing so would only create unnecessary complications.

"Let's take her to Shun," she said. "There's nowhere else she'll be safe until we get rid of them." Mukuro swallowed thickly, bitterly wishing she had known that days ago. It occurred to her then that she hadn't even told Hiei about Kazue, and she wondered if she should.

Not now. It was enough of a burden for her to bear, and he didn't need it on him also.

Mukuro stood and stretched. "Food first, though."

"The bird had eggs," Hiei said, and she considered this.

"I'll go. Stay here with her." It would be the smartest choice for Hiei to remain near the device, though whether he picked up on that notion, she didn't leave him time to ask as she walked off into the woods.

Flies were swarming the carcass of the bird's corpse, but it appeared they had been lucky enough that no scavengers had found it in the night and stolen away with the eggs, and Mukuro carried them back two at a time, one under each arm.

When she returned with the final two eggs, Hiei appeared to be considering how exactly it was that he should prepare such a meal, and so Mukuro snatched one of the eggs and jabbed two fingers into it, cracking a hole, then she drank from it.

Hiei's face contorted in disgust.

The slave girl, quite clearly oblivious as to what the egg in her hands actually was, had already begun to eat as well. Hiei frowned again, then finally cracked the shell of the egg he was holding.

As they finished their meal, Hiei tossed the empty shell aside and looked again at Mukuro. "I won't go back to your old man's hobby shop," he said. "Backtracking would cost us another day, and the girl is better off somewhere else anyway."

Mukuro glared at him. "There's _nowhere_ else safe we can leave her by herself! Those robots will find her just like—" she growled, stopping herself from mentioning Kazue. "Just like they found us!"

* * *

><p>"The robots will find her where ever she is," he said, not so much as glancing at the slave girl when she whimpered in terror at his words. "The best we can do is take her to a place with people who can protect her and treat her injuries."<p>

Hiei stood and adjusted his sword at his hip before looking down at her again. "The old bastard can hardly stand," he reminded her. "He's incapable of keeping her safe. Surely you're smart enough to realize that."

With his Jagan, Hiei mentally surveyed the land around them, his sights falling on a break in the forest a few miles away. "There's a town not far from here," he said. "We'll take her there, and then we'll move on."

"Those townspeople don't have any sense, and Shun is far more capable than you realize, Hiei." She stood then, staring him down. "They _won't_ help her, and he will!"

Mukuro glanced down at the slave girl. "I'm not gonna lead her into her death!"

"Your friend might have been capable centuries ago, but he isn't anymore," Hiei countered.

It was clear to him that Mukuro was under the misconception that because Shun had saved her once before, he would always be able to do so, but Hiei knew that it wasn't true.

"You're living in the past," he told her. "Taking the girl to him is more dangerous than you're willing to imagine."

"I could say the same of you and that town!" Mukuro snapped. "Have you been there? Don't tell me that you know what would be better for her!" Her frustration at the situation was becoming more and more apparent.

Hiei sneered at her.

"You say that," he said, "as if you think that you know what you're talking about."

Hiei thought she was going to spit an insult back at him, but the only thing that came from her mouth was a furious yell. He saw her fist coming at him in time to grab it in the air with both hands. Unfortunately, it was less than effective, and the force of the blow sent him falling backwards, a numb shock taking hold of his right cheek.

He caught himself before he landed on the ground, rebounding and aiming a swift punch to her gut.

It surprisingly made an impact, and the next thing he knew, he was on the ground on his back, having had his legs knocked out from under him by one kick to his knees. Mukuro was instantly on top of him, delivering blow after blow, Hiei trying in vain to somehow block her assault.

Through the smacks of her fists against his skin, he suddenly heard a high-pitched shriek and turned his head just in time to see the retreating figure of the slave girl as she disappeared into the forest.

Mukuro landed another hit.

"_Dammit!_" Hiei shouted, catching her other fist and wrestling with her in earnest until he managed to shove her off of him. Without sparing a moment to catch his breath, he darted into the trees, reaching out his right hand and pulling it back a moment later with one stick-thin blood-smeared arm in his hold.

He was not really sure if the blood was the girl's or his own, but he didn't have time to ponder it, for she promptly screamed even more shrilly than before. He caught her other hand before she managed to slap him with it.

"Don't even think about running," he said. "Surely you remember what happened the last time you tried to travel this forest alone."

She stared at him for a moment before bursting into tears.

"Stop!" he barked.

She didn't stop. Hiei groaned.

When he turned to head back in the other direction, his knees wobbled precariously beneath him, the sudden weakness a predictable consequence of enduring Mukuro's assault.

He dragged the girl by the arm and arrived back at the campsite moments later.

"I'm taking her to the town," he spat at Mukuro, snatching up Shun's device from the ground and stalking off in the appropriate direction, the girl's wrist clutched tightly in his hand.

"Fuckhead," she growled venomously, offering him a quick glare before he disappeared into the brush.


	16. All the Way

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter sixteen**  
><strong>"All The Way"

* * *

><p>It was when she was finally alone that Mukuro noticed the ache in her chest, but it was only fighting for dominance with the ache in her stomach from when Hiei had hit her.<p>

She was annoyed at them both, but the pain eventually won out, and she doubled over and spilled the contents of her stomach out onto the forest floor.

Blood again, but she would be fine—she had learned to deal with the weakness of her crippled insides by now.

Hiei didn't know the real reason she had been so angry, why she had fought him, and now Mukuro wasn't sure how to tell him. She felt stupid, but she also wished that she could have quelled his fighting nature for a moment, when it was important to her. She loved him any other time for it, but not when it was something so—

_Love._

That word only made her feel miserable.

* * *

><p>Upon reaching the town, Hiei immediately set about finding someone with whom to entrust the slave girl. From the way she continually insisted that she wouldn't run away from him, he guessed that he must have been holding her arm tightly enough to cause her pain, but he hadn't any time to spare, and he was not going to risk letting her out of his sight again.<p>

He had half expected for Mukuro to have caught up to them by now, thinking that she would have gotten over her anger and decided to accompany him despite their earlier disagreement, but now he realized that he would be doing this business alone. This was the first time he and Mukuro had been separated since his capture, and it made him even more anxious to return to the campsite and move on together with her.

After ten minutes of asking around, Hiei determined that Mukuro might have been onto something with regards to the helpfulness of the townsfolk, though after a little gentle coaxing (via sword and a series of colorfully descriptive threats), he was introduced to an elderly woman who was experienced in herbal medicine, and she somewhat reluctantly agreed to take the girl into her home to recuperate. Hiei realized that leaving her with this old demon hag was less than ideal, as it contradicted his own reasoning for not taking the girl to the mechanic instead, and so for good measure he gave the girl the supposed robot-protection device before leaving her there.

It was a decision he quickly came to regret, even more so when he returned to the campsite and found it empty save for what appeared to be a splattering of bloody vomit on the ground. Mukuro herself was nowhere in sight.

An icy chill passing over him, he followed faint traces of her scent through the brush to the river. On the muddy bank was a mess of footprints, some of which probably belonged to Mukuro, as well as blockish, smooth, heavy tracks, obviously made by something unnatural—or many somethings.

Hiei stared at them for several moments, his expression flat as he pieced the reality of the situation together and fear began to set in.

"_Fuck_," he said.

Hiei tore through the forest at such high velocity that his muscles strained from overexertion. Already he had wasted time trying to find the path they had taken, having realized belatedly that Mukuro had crossed the river as a means of escape. From there the way was easy to discern, as the path of scorched and damaged trees became wider and messier, more destructed pathways converging with it from several directions.

How many of them were there?

The answer soon became apparent. He arrived at the scene as the robots slowed and finally stopped. A slew of the monsters were clustered in the center of a patch of newly-cleared forest—ten of them at least, congregating over something on the ground.

A sudden blast of red energy erupted from the middle of the crowd, and two of the robots exploded on the spot, sending loose chunks of metal spiraling in all directions.

The next instant, Hiei was right up on them. Perhaps on another day he would have fought, but at that moment he was too terrified to try—too focused on a more important goal.

Using only his bare hands, he shoved his way through the mass of mechanical limbs, scooped Mukuro from the ground, and ran.

He ran blindly, as fast as his body could handle. He ran for what could have been minutes or hours. He ran until his legs threatened to buckle beneath him.

Not until he reached the massive expanse of orange flowers did he finally slow to a stop, looking down at Mukuro's unconscious, bloodied face and her exposed, wounded body.

Hiei's chest heaved as he tried to catch his breath, and he squeezed Mukuro tightly against him, his mind reeling from a profound and irrationally intense desire to protect her, a feeling he had only ever experienced with such magnitude toward his sister.

When her eye blinked open, Hiei felt an immense relief—not anger—to see that she was awake and, as such, said the very first thing that entered his brain: "You dumb bitch! Was it your _intent_ to be blown to pieces?"

* * *

><p>Mukuro did not realize that she was not still fighting until she noticed that her body felt suspiciously numb and a warm scent was all around her. This sudden change struck an odd fear in her—she didn't want to <em>die<em>—and her eye snapped open, connecting her mind again with her body.

The first thing she saw was Hiei, and the first things she felt were his arms. It was strangely comforting, and she allowed it, the haze of her unconsciousness not fully worn off yet.

_"You dumb bitch! Was it your intent to be blown to pieces?"_

Mukuro grit her teeth and opened her mouth to counter him, but her lungs burst into a fit of coughs, and she became aware of the damage she had taken all too quickly.

"No," she croaked in defeat. What she had been thinking was that they had no idea how to defeat the robots anyway, and if they were going to take her, she would take as many of them down as she could.

With her mechanical arm she plucked a bit of bloodied metal from her hand, and another from her side.

She was clearly naked now from the way the explosions had shredded her clothing completely and they were now not anywhere near the campsite. Mukuro did not want to think about how she had lost to the robots, because she did not want to think about how Hiei must have saved her from them, and how she was now less of an asset to him and more of a burden.

Mukuro looked again at Hiei and leaned up some, shaking, then whispered dryly, "Is the girl safe?"

Hiei brushed his lips lightly against her temple, breathing a small sigh, and something in Mukuro trembled.

"She's fine," he finally said, walking to a nearby tree and depositing Mukuro carefully beneath it. "If your old man was anywhere as skilled as you claim, the robots won't find the girl; I let her keep that device he gave us."

Mukuro stared at him blankly, unsure how to feel about this.

The girl would probably be safe, but they might be in a _lot_ of trouble.

Hiei pulled a bit of metal out of her shoulder, then paused. "Why the hell are you naked?"

Her fist clenched instinctively. "The explosions," she muttered. "Do you think there would be some other reason? More importantly, what are we going to do now that they are no doubt tailing us?"

Hiei turned to look into the forest. They both knew it was only a matter of time before they caught up, or before she and Hiei were attacked from another direction.

Hiei closed his eyes and opened his Jagan.

"It will be at least half an hour before those robots catch up to us," he said to Mukuro, opening his eyes again. He paused, his tone becoming harsher: "You have no reason to be worried. The tactics of those machines are poor at best. As soon as we find their weakness, we'll easily defeat them all."

He removed a piece of shrapnel from her thigh, then gingerly touched one hand to a burn wound below her collarbone. "You need to stand up soon," he told her firmly, and she knew he was right. They couldn't afford to sit around wasting time simply because she was injured. With this Mukuro resolved to bring herself to her feet, and at this moment, Hiei's earlier words clicked in her brain, and she stood up with such surprise that she nearly fell over again as a wound in her calf made itself known.

"Their weakness! When I . . . As I was fighting them . . . I don't know what it was, but some of them fell over next to one I destroyed, and. . . ." She tried to recall the events, but in the heat of battle, and with her head spinning now, her memory of it was hazy. "Maybe it's . . . each other? But I don't get it. What the hell could have—"

Mukuro's brief battle with her reeling senses came to a halt as she crumpled to the ground and emptied the contents of her stomach yet again.

* * *

><p>Hiei frowned as Mukuro collapsed to the ground again, and he waited until she had finished before he spoke. "I've noticed that the detonation of one robot can lead to a chain reaction when they're close enough together," he said. "That's probably what you witnessed. But we want to kill them without causing them to explode."<p>

He watched her intently as she sat back, looking exhausted.

"You're in little condition to fight," he said, finally standing up, and as his own words repeated in his mind, he was filled again with a chilling fear: If the robots could do this to Mukuro, what were his own chances?

He tried to push the thought aside as quickly as it occurred to him.

"Perhaps it would be wise if we found a place for you to hide. I can enter the compound alone."

"No," she said, shoving herself back to her feet. "I'm fine. I've felt much worse than this, and you've got a death wish if you think you can get in and out of there by yourself."

Hiei scowled, her words causing the fear inside him to grip even tighter, and the feeling irritated him. It seemed silly to be so scared of chunks of metal, and he didn't want his own qualms to hold him back.

His expression neutralized somewhat as he looked into her face. "Fine," he said, gazing to his left at the golden orange field of flowers. "The quickest route is through the field."

Without really waiting for her affirmation, he stepped closer to her and turned his body. "Climb onto my back. I'll carry you across."

For a moment she simply frowned and he was almost certain that she would refuse, but it was improbable that she—especially in her current condition—could make it through the field quickly enough to not be overtaken by the effects of the pollen. Mukuro must have realized this, for she walked behind him, and, with obvious displeasure, attempted to configure the best method of mounting his back before simply wrapping her arms around his neck and lifting her legs somewhat awkwardly, which he quickly caught in a firm hold.

Hiei wasted no time, and when Mukuro affirmed that she was ready, he sped into the field. They easily avoided the robots wandering in it, but with the way the way others began to shuffle in their direction, it seemed as though they had already caught attention.

He set her down outside the entrance, and Mukuro found her balance before looking at him seriously. "If there's an opportunity that one of us can distract them and the other attack, we're going to take it. That's our best shot. Finding their weakness is top priority."

Hiei gave a short nod, then searched again with his Jagan as he peered into the darkness that crept from the entrance, down the steep stone staircase, and into the depths of the compound.

"It seems they've lost interest in this door since we last escaped," he said. "We should be able to enter without any difficulties."

They descended the stairs.


	17. To the Rats

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter seventeen**  
><strong>"To The Rats"

* * *

><p>At the bottom of the stairs, they were met with an eerily empty corridor. The air was thick and moist and reeked of metal such that Mukuro actually thought she might be sick.<p>

"They don't realize we're here yet," Hiei said quietly and then started off down the corridor, Mukuro following close behind him. As they began turning corners and entering new halls, they encountered rows of cells filled with slaves, at the sight of which Hiei began to move faster.

It must have been difficult, she thought, to return to the place he had been held captive in just days ago, seeing all those people that were now in the same position he had only recently been freed from. Mukuro could understand the feeling.

But they would be rid of it soon.

Suddenly he came to an abrupt halt, holding out an arm to stop Mukuro as well. The corridor ahead of them was empty, but with a slight tilt of his head, Hiei indicated a corner up ahead.

Understanding, Mukuro crept forward with him, then she moved abruptly around the corner before Hiei had time to react, hitting the robot at one point she guessed might have been a weak spot.

There was no visible reaction.

But now she had no choice but to engage it, and she blocked its attacks, eying it for any and all clues that she could find an advantage, alert for any possible defects.

It must have only been moments of this when the robot dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

Mukuro stood over it, baffled, running over every change in technique that she had done in her head and finding nothing compellingly different. She turned to question Hiei if he had caught something she had not, but stopped, blinking at the way he stared at her.

Then she narrowed her eye.

Suddenly aware that his mouth had been hanging slack, Hiei closed it and molded his expression to mirror hers, his own eyes thinning as he scowled back at her.

"What?" he asked. "Do expect me to congratulate you?"

Mukuro's lip curled. "No, you're clearly too busy gawking at me to do anything useful!" she snapped, and as Mukuro's eyes raked over his body, Hiei looked down at himself.

Mukuro was suddenly thankful that the pants Shun had given him were at least a size too big.

Hiei looked back up at Mukuro. "If you don't want me 'gawking' at you, then you should have taken it into consideration before you took off all your clothes and got attacked by robots," he said somewhat defensively. "If you have a problem with my behavior, blame yourself."

She could have hit him.

She _would_ have hit him, if the logical part of her brain didn't remind her that now more than ever she needed to work with Hiei despite the fact that that was the _last_ thing she wanted to do at the moment.

As it stood, she made dents in her palm with her fingernails and glared daggers instead.

"I _didn't_—I can't even," she fumbled for words, still fighting the overwhelming temptation to lunge at him. "Just get away from me, you unhelpful shit! I need to think."

* * *

><p>"Hn, fine," said Hiei, flitting closer to the robot and tapping its head experimentally with the toe of his shoe.<p>

For a split second, the black eye-holes carved into its plastic-skinned face glowed a dull red.

"Are you sure that it's dead?" Hiei asked, tensing as the eyes flickered out again.

"What?" Mukuro said, then looked down at the limp figure of the robot and knelt over it. It did not move, and after a moment, she slid her hand under its shirt and lifted it.

The chest and stomach of the creature were obviously mechanical, and it became quickly apparent where she had hit it from the dented circular area smeared with blood.

She looked up at Hiei and back, then said, "I'd bet that's it."

After staring for another second, she lifted the robot's torso and yanked its overly large shirt over its head, pulling it on her own body. She shot Hiei one more dirty look before she asked, "You ready?"

"I'm always ready," he snapped impetuously, peering ahead of her into the corridor. As they continued on, Hiei made a genuine effort to not even pass a glance at Mukuro, as though to demonstrate a lack of interest in her in the way that she looked.

Their pace had slowed to a walk, for they had never traveled the route Hiei mapped with his Jagan, and as the way became darker and filthier, odd noises began to manifest themselves in their surroundings. His arm brushed against Mukuro's in the darkness, and, unwarranted, images of her flashed through his mind. He remembered the way they touched each other since his memory had returned, how he had gravitated to sleeping at her side, and he wondered how it had happened and what it meant. There had been a time when the sight of her naked body had only left him with a feeling of indifference, but somehow he did not feel indifferent about it anymore.

He wondered what had changed.

Suddenly, the feeling of Mukuro tensing next to him snapped Hiei out of his thoughts, and he felt a mild surge of irritation at himself—this was a less-than-ideal time to wallow in his confused emotions. If he wasn't careful, they could cost him his life.

"Do you hear that?" Her voice was barely a whisper, and as Hiei followed Mukuro's gaze to the passageway at their right, he heard the noise as well. With the Jagan, he searched the hall and the rooms at the end of it, and was confused at the lack of robots he found.

The noise sounded again—a series of scuffling, followed by a loud clatter.

Half of Hiei wanted to continue on and pretend he had never heard anything, but it was the other half that made him turn and walk toward the source of the sounds, treading quietly until he reached a wooden door at the end of the hall.

He looked back at Mukuro, who had followed him and was standing off to the side, her stance alert as she eyed the door. "What's behind it?" she asked.

Hiei shrugged, and without further contemplation kicked the door open.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but his eyes were met with literally nothing—the room apparently had no available light source, for through the doorway it was pitch black.

There were several moments of nothing, and then the noises sounded again—this time louder, and Hiei realized that the scuffling seemed to be coming toward him.

He instinctively drew his sword and had readied himself to slice through whatever was coming at him when he looked down just in time to see a large rat scrambling out of the door way. The mangy creature skidded on the stone floor as it made a sharp turn and began to scamper away down the corridor.

Hiei watched it go, then gave Mukuro a bland sort of look.

The corners of her mouth twitched. "So that was it," she said.

It was at that moment that there came an obnoxious crash and a chorus of scratching from inside the darkened room, followed shortly after by a literal herd of foot-long rats exiting the doorway, climbing frantically over each other (and Hiei's feet) as they spilled into the hall.

* * *

><p>Rats.<p>

At such a time, they were nothing but a cruel joke, and Mukuro was not amused. She turned her gaze to watch the last of them disappear around the corner at the end of the hall, and it was then that she saw a robot come into view.

No, a group of them. And they were rushing toward her and Hiei now.

Mukuro braced herself to fight them, but when five more rounded the corner, she faltered. Before she allowed them to come closer, she snatched Hiei's hand in hers and dragged him into the room the rats came out of, slamming the door shut behind them.

"What are we—" Hiei began, but Mukuro heard a shuffle and crash as Hiei's hand was jerked from her grasp. A growl came from somewhere below her and a flame sparked into life as Hiei scrambled to his feet.

Mukuro quickly crossed the room, which was littered with dishes and, from the pot of gruel on the stove, appeared to be a kitchen. She turned to prepare herself, but Hiei snagged her shirt and pulled her to the back of the room, then knocked his fist against the wall, where a hidden door fell back under the force of his fist, stirring up clouds of dust from the appallingly grimy stone floor.

Across the room, the wooden door shattered, and Hiei's hand was hard on Mukuro's back, shoving her into the secret tunnel. They both raced through the dark, twisted passage, the rocks of the floor biting into her bare feet, but she ignored them with Hiei at her back and the robots surely not far behind.

She began to wonder just how far the tunnel would go when Hiei informed her of a fork up ahead, and she turned without thought to the left.

_Where will it lead?_ Mukuro asked him through her mind as she continued to run, but she was answered by only her own thoughts.

_Hiei?_

She was suddenly certain that she could not feel his presence in her mind anymore.

She turned swiftly, dashing back the way she had come, and it became obvious that none of the robots had followed her, instead having taken Hiei's route.

Well, that answered one question.

When she spotted several on Hiei's path, she shot her energy at them, and the resulting explosion caught their attention.

"Hiei!" she screamed, hoping that he would somehow hear her wherever he was. At least now the robots may not have been after him anymore.

"_Go back_!" Mukuro heard echoing so quietly that she was hesitant for a moment, thinking she may have imagined it, but with the robots now upon her, she trusted his voice had been real and ran back to her path until she was met again with the dim lighting of the slave compound filtering under a door just ahead of her.

Mukuro emerged and quickly checked her surroundings. It seemed that she had been led to what appeared to be a bathing room, and she paused briefly to take advantage of a faucet and rinse the blood from her person. Once she had exited the room, she tried vainly to reach out to Hiei's mind again before coming to the conclusion that something was indefinitely blocking their communication.

Now Mukuro would have to find a way to him, and she had no clue where his tunnel had led him.

It was only a minor issue next to the fact that she had no idea where _she_ even was.

She shuffled cautiously down the stone corridor for several minutes, passing cells that were eerily quiet, and took the first turn she could find that she hoped might eventually lead to Hiei's location based on her own navigational assumptions.

Mukuro had gone only five paces down the hall before movement caught her eye, and she whipped her head around, approaching one of the cell rooms.

Two men stood in front of one of the cells, and when they noticed Mukuro standing there, their jaws dropped.

"Masuyo—" one of them uttered, then cleared his throat.

"So you got mechanized just like Kouta, huh?" the other man said with a smooth grin.

Mukuro felt a tingle of recognition, but had no time to process anything but the fact that these men were probably slave owners, and they were also assuming she was someone else. And that someone was probably her mother.

"Yes," Mukuro answered. For now she would play the part, but she would have to think fast. "But the procedure affected my memory of the building." They eyed her strangely, and she continued, "I'm guessing you want those slaves? I'll need some help getting around first."

The men begrudgingly agreed to her request, and when Mukuro led them back to the bathing room, she gestured at the tunnel's opening and asked, "Where does the other fork in that tunnel lead?"

The second man glared at her. "Beats the shit outta me. Why the hell would we know where your secret damn tunnels go?"

Mukuro pursed her lips in frustration and strode out of the room, one of the men's voices following her with, "Is that _all_?"

"No," she responded. "Not quite. The tunnel went in that direction." Mukuro pointed. "Take me where you think it would lead out to."

Mukuro heard a growl from one of the men, but she ignored it and allowed them to breeze past her.

She would deal with these lowlifes for Hiei's sake.

They were expendable.

—.—

Mukuro found after two minutes that watching the slavers' heads bobbing in front of her was not distracting enough to keep her frayed nerves under control, and she instead resorted to glancing around for any signs of hidden passageways or interlopers.

Which were far more likely to be robots than anything else.

And under the present conditions, Mukuro was not keen on revealing her identity to be a false one.

"_Masuyo_," she heard ahead of her, and gathered herself. Mukuro made a mental note to remember that name. "What?" she answered sharply.

"Here," one of the men said, pointing at an opening in the wall that contained yet more cells.

"What?" she repeated more irritably and walked closer.

Before Mukuro could get a closer look at whatever the man was gesturing at, the ceiling above them rumbled, and Mukuro leaped away as the stones above their heads came crashing down, a chunk landing heftily on her left leg.

Mukuro was prepared to curse the place and its faulty architecture, but the words died on her lips as a putrid smell choked her. "The fuck," she sputtered between coughs, her gaze raking the rubble-scattered hall for the two men and locking instead on something entirely different than the expected stone on her leg.

Hiei.

They stared at each other for a moment in a mixture of shock and confusion before Hiei finally lifted himself up on all fours, freeing her. "That's what you get for meandering beneath structurally-unsound ceilings, idiot," he said, and she was about to make a cutting retort regarding his choice to stand on a structurally unsound floor when one of the slavers' voices piped, "Hey!"

The two men were standing across from them in the corridor. One was coughing from the debris, and the other was staring at Hiei wide-eyed.

"You're that slave boy!" the man said.

Hiei's eyes thinned.


	18. Control

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter eighteen**  
><strong>"Control"

* * *

><p>Mukuro found herself glancing back and forth between Hiei and the slaver before realizing that Hiei did indeed recognize the man, and she felt an odd sense of guilt and something else—fear?—twist in her stomach.<p>

The man began to approach them and Hiei was on his feet in a flash, an uncharacteristically apprehensive snarl crossing his features as he tore his sword from its sheath.

"Where'd you get that, you little shit?" the slaver growled, and Mukuro rose carefully to her feet before he could get close.

"Back off," she snapped.

The slaver looked at her with obvious confusion, but before he could inquire, Hiei spat, "What the fuck, Mukuro? Were you going to kill them now or wait until we got home?"

"Mukuro?" the other slaver echoed, and Mukuro grimaced. "Seems like your usefulness has run out, men," she muttered with finality.

* * *

><p>One of the men repeated Mukuro's name in bewilderment, and in the split second before blind rage set in, it briefly occurred to Hiei that she had been intending to use these worthless excuses for flesh and blood as means of acquiring more information about the compound.<p>

But the thought was fleeting and easily-repressed. There was nothing these disgusting imbeciles knew that Hiei could not find out for himself.

With quick jerk of Hiei's wrist, there was an elegant spray of red, and the man who had yelped Mukuro's name crumpled to the ground, blood gushing from his severed neck.

The other man—the slave trader he knew from his time in imprisonment—took an unsteady step backward as Hiei whipped around to face him. He could smell the fear in the air, see it beading on the slaver's wretched face in tiny droplets of moisture—it was the same fear that he remembered the last time he had come face to face with this man, except then, it was not the man who had been afraid.

Hiei had been confused then, but he was not anymore.

The man's beady eyes darted between him and Mukuro, back and forth. "What the hell is this?" he demanded, seeming torn between confusion and terror. He looked over at the now-lifeless body of his companion, to the bloodied blade of Hiei's sword, and stumbled back another step. Hiei could not help the small ghost of a smile that tugged on the corners of his mouth, brought on by that wonderfully delicious feeling of having control again.

"You're afraid, aren't you?" Hiei growled, his voice dangerously low. The man did not respond, so he continued: "There's no point in being afraid. Whichever way I decide to kill you will be merciful compared to what you deserve."

"You little asshole—"

It didn't matter. Two seconds and thirty-six slashes later, the man was no longer a man, but a pile of blood, bone, and innards splattered on the floor and dripping off the wall behind.

Hiei took a deep breath, sheathed his sword, and wiped blood off of his face with the back of one hand before turning matter-of-factly to Mukuro. "We need to get back up there," he said, nodding once at the ceiling. "There's something that I think you should see."

* * *

><p>Mukuro watched silently with something akin to awe as Hiei dispatched the first slaver and turned on the second, and with wickedness dripping from his voice, <em>"You're afraid, aren't you?"<em>

She had seen examples of Hiei's cruelty through his memories, but never had she seen him take so much pleasure from a kill firsthand. It twisted something inside of her, something familiar but unfamiliar and uncomfortably warm.

_"We need to get back up there,"_ Mukuro heard, realizing he was addressing her again, and she narrowed her eye, dispelling the thought. _"There's something that I think you should see."_

She stared contemplatively at the ceiling. There was no telling where a set of stairs were, or if they'd be able to find the spot again once they reached the next floor. Her gaze flicked back to Hiei and they seemed to silently agree upon their course of action, and he was the first to jump up through the hole.

Mukuro followed his lead, and it was only when she felt his hand firmly on her waist in an unconscious effort to steady her that she became aware of the feeling that had come over her at the sound of his murderous tone earlier.

_No,_ she scolded herself inwardly, _No, I will most definitely not think of _that_._

Mukuro cleared her throat as she observed the damp tunnel and said, doing little to hide her disgust, "Please tell me this isn't what you wanted to show me."

The putrid odor that filled the place was unmistakable. Without a doubt, it was meant to be a sewer system.

Hiei ignored her, removing his hand from her waist, and started off down the tunnel.

As they found themselves deeper into the sewer, Mukuro began to cough sporadically; she had to wonder if the only reason Hiei was not himself was because he was holding his breath.

Eventually they arrived at their destination and Hiei stopped, nodding down at a broken cord attached to the wall.

"I think the wire runs the length of this tunnel. Since I didn't know what it was being used for, I destroyed it—"

"Clever," Mukuro muttered tartly.

"—but I don't know whether it had an effect. What do you suppose is its purpose?" he asked, turning to her.

"Well it obviously doesn't look like it had anything to do with the power," Mukuro replied. "How many mechanical things do you think are being used here? The only obvious things are the robots and the electricity. It's somehow doubtful that had anything to do with the robots, but who knows. We'd have to follow it and find out where it goes." She wrinkled her nose and continued, "Personally, I'm more than ready to get the hell out of here."

With that, Mukuro continued down the tunnel, trying hard to ignore the feeling of the moist ground under her feet and her all-too-awareness of Hiei at her side, and she suddenly regretted her choice not to kill one of the slavers while she had the chance. It would probably be a while before she could have the satisfaction of making something bleed again.

And the stink was giving her a headache. . . .

Mukuro glanced out of the corner of her eye at him. She wanted to be close enough to make sure he was safe, but there was something awkward and distant between them that Mukuro was not sure how to bridge, and at the moment, was also not sure if she wanted to.

Mukuro was frustrated and in pain and whether or not Hiei deserved it, she simply didn't feel like bearing with the way he made her feel.

Mukuro's eyes continued trailing over the wire as they walked, and she stopped when she saw it take a ninety degree turn toward the ceiling.

She couldn't have been happier.

Taking a couple steps back, Mukuro followed Hiei's previous example and blasted a hole into the roof.

"If the robots aren't after us already, they certainly will be with all the destruction we're causing," Mukuro quipped.

Hiei angled his head at the hole, and Mukuro squinted through the dust at the hulking figure standing at its edge. "Wish granted."

* * *

><p>Luck was seemingly on their side.<p>

Mukuro blowing a hole in the ceiling exactly where a robot happened to be standing was just too perfect—perfect because it meant they didn't have to go looking around for the robots, which made their goal of destroying every last one of them much simpler.

And Hiei liked simple.

A foot to the left and she would have blasted the robot itself.

"We'll make quick work of this," he said confidently, still high from the adrenaline rush of mincing the slaver and his friend.

His hand poised on his sword and his legs tensed in anticipation to jump, Hiei peered up through the hole in the ceiling, waiting for an opportunity to leap through the debris, when suddenly he heard an audible crack and paused.

A similar noise followed. And another, and another—and it wasn't until the air was filled with a painfully loud, continuous splitting sound that Hiei realized what was happening, thrusting his arm on instinct to shove Mukuro away from the hole before diving backwards himself just in time to avoid being crushed by the collapsing ceiling.

Moments later, he sat up in the sick-smelling sludge on the sewer floor, Mukuro sprawled a few feet behind him. "Shit," he muttered, and at that moment, all four of the robots clustered atop the layer of rubble turned to look at him.

Hiei made to stand, only to find that his leg was trapped beneath a rather hefty block of concrete. This obviously wasn't going to be as simple as he might have hoped.

As Mukuro wasted no time throwing herself at the robots, Hiei tried desperately to push away the slab of concrete that had him pinned to the ground. Her assaults seem to distract the machines and buy him time, but as he glanced at her from the top of his vision, he could see that she was struggling to keep their attackers at bay. The robots seemed to be collectively straining in his direction, and the only thing keeping them away was Mukuro.

Hiei knew that as long as he was on the ground, he was a detriment to the situation, but as he stopped to watch at Mukuro struggle with the lunkish machines, his stomach twinged in a disturbingly familiar manner, and no matter how he pulled and pushed at the concrete block, it only bore down harder on his knee.

He could not move it. _What the fuck?_

He swore at the object, tried to drag himself out from under it instead of pushing it off, but doing so only twisted his leg, eliciting from him a hiss of pain.

Then five more robots hopped through the hole in the ceiling to join the others and, sorely outnumbered and overwhelmed by their combined strength, Mukuro was lifted from the ground and hurled through the air, her body making impact against the wall with an audible smack.

The next thing Hiei knew, he was on his feet, though he hadn't a clue how he'd gotten there. His body a bundle of tension, he balanced on his left side, gingerly testing his sore right leg as he looked between Mukuro, who was picking herself up from the ground, and the robots, who had now set their sights on him.

As swiftly as the blows Mukuro had thrown, rage grew inside of him, blossoming amidst the knots of anxiety. And as the two emotions fought for dominance, the more conflicted he felt, torn between wanting to flee and wanting to fight. In the end, all he could manage was to stand rooted to the spot in the remaining seconds before the robots closed in.

"Hiei!"

He lurched to the side, narrowly avoiding a blow to the chest and, without even attempting to attack, dodged his way out of the mess of robots and over to Mukuro. As she regained her footing, he tugged insistently at her oversized shirt, as though to pull her in the direction he wanted to go.

"We're getting out of here," he growled, shooting an apprehensive glance at the robots, who had only just realized he was no longer in their midst. "_Now_."

Mukuro stared at him only a split second before she ran, and Hiei followed, abandoning the robots to a later death.

They jumped down through the hole Hiei had blasted earlier and ran past the bodies of the fallen slavers, then Mukuro snapped, "Where should we go?"

"My Jagan isn't working!" Hiei answered.

"What the hell do you mean it isn't working?"

"I mean just that! It's not as if I've got a better idea why than you do!"

As they rounded a corner and the tint of the stone halls began to darken, a heavy feeling rose up inside Hiei's chest, filling his throat, choking him. Was it anger?

He couldn't tell anymore. He didn't know what he felt, except that it was too much for him to handle.

They came upon two doorways in close proximity to one another. As Mukuro paused to peer into one of them, Hiei stopped, too, and his brain vaguely registered that this was the place where Masuyo had locked him up with the slave girl.

Hiei did not understand why those things had happened to him. He didn't care about understanding—all he wanted was to feel in control of himself again. He thought that when they entered the compound, this quasi-mission of his was something he could accomplish. But as he replayed in his mind their most recent encounter with the robots, he felt the unmovable faith he'd always had in himself slowly disintegrating with every step he took.

Whatever part of him that had, in the past, driven him to obliterate any and all intimidating obstacles in his path was gone—now, all of a sudden, his fear had the ability to immobilize him completely, to make him do things he would never otherwise give himself permission to do. It made him want to run.

Run like a coward.

As Mukuro made to step into the room, the floor of which was coated with charred bits of rubble and shattered glass, Hiei reached out to touch her again. Touching her had somehow become instinctive—though he was unsure why or how—and it comforted him to confirm her presence in a tangible way.

But his anxiety was something he could not—_would_ not—let her be privy to. He withdrew his hand before his fingers could make contact with her arm. "Stop," he ordered instead. "We're wasting time."

She paused, her back to him, then gave a short nod before continuing on with him past the charred ruins of the hall, eventually coming to cleaner, more brightly-lit hall. A wave of vivid memories washed over him, feelings of the robots' arms digging into his skin making him cringe.

"Here," Hiei said, leading Mukuro to a door and shoving it open with more force than necessary. "They always brought me here to see her."

* * *

><p>Mukuro hated not knowing where she was going, but she hated feeling like she had failed even more. The robots were not shut down and she was injured. Mukuro had been sure that she knew how to handle things, and now they had begun to literally crash down around her.<p>

She was exhausted with worrying, exhausted from losing again and again. Something inside of her wanted to give up, but Hiei running at her side kept her moving. She had not lost everything. She had won him.

It was not—could not be—over.

The room Hiei had led her into was small and plain, and upon further inspection it did not seem to contain anything of note.

Except for that wall.

Mukuro crossed the room and first pressed her hands against it, then skimmed her palms along a conspicuous crease in the stone until she reached the bottom and found a tiny slot between the stone and the floor, where she hooked her fingers and pulled until the hidden door swung open.

"Another secret passage," Mukuro muttered. "I wonder what our chances are of it taking us somewhere good this time." She glanced at Hiei. "You go first."

Mukuro noted the brief surprise on his face—which was quickly replaced with irritation—but he said nothing as he walked ahead of her.

Something was plaguing his mind as much as something was hers, and as desperately as she wanted to fill up the silence with friendly—or cutting—banter, she could not. Mukuro was missing the familiarity of him. She, already, was missing something she had only recently come to own.

And there they were again, those thoughts, again. Mukuro blanked her mind. Emotions, speculations, there was no more time for them.

But it was Hiei, and that made it difficult.

He stopped suddenly and Mukuro heard the soft exhalation of his breath as he forced open another door.

The room they emerged into was softly lit and eerily quiet, and much larger than the room that had led them there. It was decorated with an array of beautiful things—tapestries, furniture, plants—and the first thing that became apparent was that this was no ordinary room. It was clearly the living quarters of someone important.

The second thing was that they were not alone.

Mukuro only had a brief moment to suck in her breath in surprise before the figure turned around. He was standing in front of the wardrobe, and had been gazing intently at something.

Now his softly glowing eyes were set upon Hiei and Mukuro, and the mechanical nuances of his figure immediately explained why she had detected no energy signal.

But this was not one of the robot drones.

* * *

><p>Already ill at ease, Hiei was not adapting well to the task of carefully noting his surroundings, and so when his eye caught sight of light glinting off of smooth curves of metal, he took an involuntary step backward, almost bumping into Mukuro as he did.<p>

Immediately he was angry with himself. But she hadn't seemed to notice—her eyes had not moved from that lone figure across from them, and her gaze was stony and discerning, radiating strength.

Under no circumstances could Hiei let this fear triumph. Cowardice was unacceptable in front of her.

"Who the fuck are you?" he snarled at the stranger, as though the hostile tone would break him of whatever hesitation he was grappling with at the moment.

But whatever this creature was did not respond, much less move at all. Its eyes continued to glow the color of hot embers as it stared at them, the smooth contours of its head certainly not organic, but somehow not entirely mechanical either.

The fact that this individual had not blindly and mercilessly begun to assault them gave Hiei confidence in the notion that it might be weak in some obvious way. With nary a sound, he thumbed the hilt of his sword a few inches out of the sheath. "Answer the question," he said. "Or you'll soon find yourself lacking a head with which to do it."

It was at this point that the robot's face tilted infinitesimally downward, and Hiei realized that ever since their entering the room, it had not been appraising him, but Mukuro. It looked at Hiei for only a moment before glancing back up at her, and in a voice that sounded mechanized yet chillingly alive, it said, "So you have returned."

* * *

><p>For a too-long moment in which she was only distantly aware of Hiei speaking, Mukuro stared at the robotic man, and he stared back at her.<p>

No, not just at her. _Into_ her. As if he knew her dark secrets, things of her that she was wholly unaware of.

_"So you have returned."_

And she couldn't stand another second of it.

Mukuro flung herself across the room, bitterly determined to end the robot thing's probing, presumptuous gaze.

The robotic man shifted to one side and her fist swung harmlessly through the air in front of her. Already it was clear that her blows were useless, and the more aware of this fact she was, the more furious she became.

To make matters worse, the creature seemed content not to attack her at all, merely effortlessly dodging the physical assault which would have by now rendered the most capable fighters incapacitated.

The fact that she really wanted him to die only made that fact more infuriating.

"_Fuck!_" Mukuro screeched.

"How did you come back?" he buzzed dispassionately while avoiding another of Mukuro's onslaughts.

She roared and threw even more effort into her next punch, and to her satisfaction she actually landed the blow.

The pain, however, was not what she had been expecting.

Mukuro jerked her flesh fist back and cried out at the agony spasming through her hand. The skin on her knuckles was shredded and, by the pain, some of her fingers were likely broken.

She couldn't be asked to hit this bastard anymore.

On reflex, fast enough to give any normal demon whiplash, she gathered her energy and shot it toward the damnable robot thing, and all that could be heard was the impact.

But only the wardrobe that the robot man had been previously gazing at was in pieces, and he himself stood unscathed to the side.

Then she saw him come at her, briefly demanding "Answer me!" before he struck and sent her reeling across the room and into the wall.

For a terrible and indeterminate period of time, Mukuro lay cradled by rubble, sure she was going to die. Then a startled cry breathed will back into her aching, trembling limbs, and forced her to pry herself free of the stones.

It was Hiei. The fight was not over.


	19. A Necessary End

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter nineteen**  
><strong>"A Necessary End"

* * *

><p>Hiei knew that there was little he could do to tip the odds in her favor. He didn't even know what their odds were anymore. For now he could only stand by and watch as Mukuro tried with all her strength to end the creature's existence. Blow after blow she sent its way, and yet no matter how fast she threw punches, it easily avoided each one with an inhuman grace and calculated precision. The scene in front of Hiei became a blur of gray, orange, and white, punctuated by Mukuro's grunts of effort and the sounds of air moving between them.<p>

A subtle noise behind him caused Hiei to jerk sideways, narrowly missing being slammed into the ground by one of the five robots that were entering the room behind him.

"Shit," he muttered numbly. His hand hesitated on his sword—but he knew using it would be pointless. Already he could feel that insufferable terror blossoming in his chest.

How was he supposed to win like this? he wondered as he flitted back and forth, trying to avoid the robots' attacks. But then one of the grabbing mechanical hands managed to swipe his arm, and Hiei lost his balance, uttering a startled gasp and stumbling backwards in surprise.

Mukuro's sudden shriek of pain distracted Hiei enough for the robots to corner him, and shortly after the room was rattled by an impressive blast of energy, one of the machines successfully grabbed hold of him, and he found himself being drug up from the ground by the arm.

Desperately, he struggled to free himself, but the robot's grasp was too powerful and his own physical strength paled in comparison.

He was helpless.

If he fought back, he would only weaken himself by causing the robots to explode, and if he escaped, they would only catch him again. As a painful hopelessness began to take root inside of him, he looked at the face of the robot that currently held him in its clutches, and the lack of expression on its angular features coupled with the dangerous glowing of its eye sockets drove all Hiei's feelings home into an overwhelming, unavoidable wave of fear.

He struggled harder, needing to be free from this, and not caring how. He would rather die than be at the mercy of these damn machines. He punched with his other hand and kicked at the robot, tried to maneuver himself out of its hold. In response, the robot twisted his arm in a most agonizing way, causing Hiei to cry out uncontrollably.

The next moment, he was on the ground. His arm throbbing, his mind rattled, and his body trembling, Hiei stared in shock as Mukuro, from seemingly nowhere, pummeled her fists into the chest of the beast. And it was at this point that something very strange happened:

The robot fell.

For one short moment, they both stared at its motionless body lying there on the ground.

Then Mukuro turned around to look at him, her flesh hand bent, the skin there bloodied and bruised just like her face—and she looked just as surprised by her victory as Hiei felt.

But just as quickly, her expression changed, and she shouted out his name a mere second before he was grabbed again, this time from behind.

Within a few moments, Mukuro had disengaged two of the robot drones, and with the same mode of attack—a sharp strike to the chest. At her attack, the one that had tried to snatch Hiei from behind fell to the ground with a tremendous crash.

They weren't invincible.

The other three robots crowded in on him and, in a burst of hope, Hiei threw himself at them, aiming a swift blow to the chest plate of the one nearest to him.

Nothing.

He tried again and again, altering the blow slightly each time, but to no avail—the robots continued to reach and grab for him, completely undeterred by his attacks.

As anxiety began to overtake him again, Hiei darted away from the mechanical beasts. He had hit the robots the same way that Mukuro had, so why was it that he could not affect them?

Suddenly, the painful sound of flesh on metal split the air, and Hiei turned just in time to see the robotic demon reeling backward, his face spattered in red and his features twisted into something actually resembling emotion. Mukuro, having just delivered the blow, looked jaded, terrified, and furious all at once. Rivers of blood trickled down her flesh arm and dripped by her feet, and as she stared at her wounded limb, her eyes widened in realization.

Blood? They were weakened by blood?

Hiei knew on instinct what she was going to do next. The warrior's spirit in him was the same as the one that pulsed within her. It was the voice that said if a path to victory was apparent, it should be taken without hesitation, regardless of personal sacrifice. It was a voice of pride, courage, and strength. It was the voice that Hiei lived by.

But the moment Mukuro sliced through her arm, words began to explode from Hiei's mouth on their own accord. "No!" he roared. "You idiot! That isn't going to help!"

* * *

><p>Mukuro heard Hiei, but she couldn't listen. They had come all this way, fought so hard, been through so much pain, and now they had the means with which to finally end it all.<p>

Her path was clear.

Mukuro fought harder than ever, more inspired by her success for someone else's sake than she had been by her own successes since she was young. It had been only pain that had driven her after that.

But this time was different.

Some distant part of Mukuro's mind laughed. How silly Hiei would think her, fighting hard for him—willing to bleed herself against this robot bastard's every accessible body part in order to ensure that victory.

His victory. Their victory.

Her hand was battered and bruised to the point of numbness other than the jolts of pain with each impact, and yet it only drove her to fight harder. She couldn't falter for a second no matter the damage.

The damage would not matter. It would not last.

Mukuro did not expect she would live to care about it.

* * *

><p>No matter how hard he yelled at her, Mukuro did not seem to hear him, and she did not cease her mindless assault of the humanoid robot. This time it was clear that the two opponents were far more evenly matched, for with every punch Mukuro threw, the robot's movements became less offensive and more defensive.<p>

But the blood.

Hiei had seen so much violence in his life—a large chunk of it initiated by him—that blood had never bothered him intensely. But now, seeing Mukuro covered in red, watching it fly from her person, seeing the determination on her face, a willfulness—a willingness.

A willingness to give it all up.

The mechanized demon landed a hit and Mukuro faltered as she absorbed it, but as she regained her balance, her posture became even more dangerous, reckless. And just for that moment, Hiei was no longer afraid of anything in the room. Anything but her.

"You're a fool, Mukuro!" he shouted. "You're a fool if you think I'll let you do this alone!"

Gritting his teeth, Hiei drew his sword and sliced his hand.

"No, Hiei!" she managed to cry, but that was futile.

Hiei slung his fist into the chest of a robot, and—

No response.

It was her blood alone.

"It's useless, Hiei!" she shouted between movements. "I have to do it!" She yelped softly with a connected blow to her chest and choked out, "Leave! You can't do anything but get in my way!"

Over the pounding of his own pulse in his ears and the sticky, warm blood trailing down his wounded hand, Hiei found it within himself to snarl. He meant the noise for no one in particular, except perhaps himself and the futility of the battle in which he was currently engaged.

"I'm not leaving you alone!" he shot back at Mukuro, but at that precise moment, a metal hand clasped around his arm and he dropped his sword with a clatter. "Fuck!"

The robots pulled him from the ground, and Hiei struggled as Mukuro was side-swiped again by the android creature.

"Dammit!" Hiei shouted, a terrible coldness filling his chest as the robots clutched and pulled at his aching limbs. "I refuse to leave here without you!"

But nothing deterred her attacks, and Hiei could only watch her blood fly.

He had tried. He had tried to make her stop with his words. They were the only tools he had left, but even they were useless now.

He was going to lose her.

At the realization of it, something in Hiei's chest had already frozen, a once-living part of him turning stiff and rigid.

He didn't think he could bear it. Yet his heart was numbing itself already, trying with all it had to detach itself, to regain neutrality. It should have been natural for him, not caring. And he wanted so badly not to care.

But he couldn't do it.

If he lost Mukuro, Hiei would lose some part of himself that he didn't think he could be left without. He would lose everything that he had only just gained for himself, the foreign joy and belonging he could only find with her.

"You insufferable _bitch_!" His voice was beginning to cross the line from panicked and enraged to psychotic, but Hiei hardly cared. "Are you really so thick-headed that you can't find a better way than this to win? Has everything meant so little to you that you'll willingly give it up without a second thought?"

Finally, finally he had found something good, and damned if he was going to exchange it for a victory in battle.

Hiei tried again in vain to slip free from the robots' grasp, and in return found both his wrists clamped in an agonizing hold. Again, he cried out:

"None of this is worth more to me than your life!"

* * *

><p><em>"Are you really so thick-headed that you can't find a better way than this to win?"<em>

A part of Mukuro wanted to shout, "There is no other way!" They hadn't the time, the strength, or the means with which to even try something else. But she couldn't bring herself to say it. Perhaps it would be better that way—perhaps he would miss her less if he believed she did not care about dying.

But no matter what, that would be a lie.

She wanted to stay. She wanted to be happy. She wanted to try somehow, to find a way to make up for all the years she had spent in anger and discord. To make something of the life that his existence had given her.

Mukuro was becoming dizzy, and her efforts at blocking the cyborg's attacks were becoming futile. She cut herself more, knowing the more opportunities for her blood to touch him, the better chance she would have.

The better chance Hiei would have.

And pain radiated through her, but his words dulled it all:

_"None of this is worth more to me than your life!" _

What an idiot he was. What a wonderful, stupid idiot.

Of all the things Hiei was, selfless was not one of them. He did whatever it took to survive, and if he was not seriously determined about something, he did not risk his life over it. Someone else's well being was not among those things, or at least never in a big enough way for him to admit to.

Mukuro wished now that Hiei could just be himself and leave her, but something in her realized that Hiei was being himself, because she . . . had become a part of that.

As unlikely as it was—a part of him.

Mukuro was hit again, fighting the agony inside and out of her, the desire she had so much to live only to know that he would not have to suffer this, but the knowledge that it could not be so.

Damn Hiei. Damn him forever.

The two of them paused for a moment, and the robot man loosed an unsettling laugh and shook his hand, flinging droplets of blood. "You're not at all like Masuyo," he said. "Your mother, Masuyo. Did you wonder what her name might be? I'm your father, Kouta."

Mukuro stared. Kouta? Wasn't that . . .

"Why fight me? You exist because of me. Family shouldn't fight."

Whatever innocence he had been feigning fled from his eyes, and Mukuro flung herself again at him.

They struggled fruitlessly for a moment, then Mukuro's blood-soaked hand managed to graze the cyborg's—Kouta's—shoulder. He, in return, stiffened with rage and tossed her a punch that she, in her weakened state, was unable to avoid, and she careened toward the ground.

He was on her quickly, and as she fought hard to bat his fists away, he spoke, "Masuyo never fought me. She was obedient! Obedience is why you were _born_! You don't need to fight it!"

Mukuro's hand was mangled, her head battered, her body aching with pain. He sat on her, trapping her, and she hadn't the strength to fight him back to her feet.

Her strength to fight him at all was fading rapidly.

At some point in the midst of this, through the haze of the blood in her eyes, Mukuro saw the flash of a sword above her and heard the sharp metal _clank_ of impact.

Then, a piece of the broken sword fell, slicing into her arm on its way down, and she only managed to utter a soft cry.

The blows to her face ceased long enough for her to see Kouta swing at Hiei, knocking him away.

Then, she saw his hand reach down, snatching up the fragment of sword.

Then, nothing.


	20. Last Ones Standing

**Seven Days of Falling**

_a fanfiction by andrivette and psychoheidi_

chapter twenty**  
><strong>"Last Ones Standing"

* * *

><p>The cyborg's metal-plated skin was too strong for Hiei's sword to cut. The blade of it snapped in half as though it were as flimsy as a branch, and in the next instant, Hiei was on the ground a few yards away, motionless and only distantly aware of the sharp pain in his jaw.<p>

He wasn't sure how long he lay there. The room was eerily silent, and his eyes were closed. At first, he wondered if he was even still alive, and then, all at once, a wave of excruciating pain swept over him and he shot into a sitting position, the feeling of being embedded with a layer of shrapnel an all too familiar and unwelcome experience.

He spotted Mukuro, body crushed beneath the metal frame of their adversary, and he went to her. The cyborg lay still and quiet, and at first Hiei was wary for any sign of movement, but soon it became clear that the creature had somehow been deactivated—it was not alive anymore, even if Hiei didn't understand how.

They were alone.

It took nearly all of Hiei's remaining strength to heave the robot off of her, gather her into his arms, and navigate to the small room they had passed through before, where Masuyo had once tended to his own injuries.

There was so much blood; it seeped into the white sheets of the cot he laid Mukuro on. Hiei touched her neck, searching for a pulse, and was filled with such intense relief upon finding one that it served to numb all else he was feeling.

Hiei cleaned and bandaged the gash on his own hand and, then, after dampening a cloth he had found lying amidst jars of indeterminable contents, seated himself next to Mukuro and carefully began to wipe away the blood from her battered arm. From the unnatural angle it was twisted at, Hiei suspected that her wrist was broken. He was certain at least three of her fingers were. He bandaged her arm up to the elbow and wet the cloth again, gingerly blotting the dirt and blood away from her bruised, swollen face.

Then, exhausted and hurting, Hiei rested his head on Mukuro's chest and closed his eyes to the steady sound of her breathing.

Perhaps he lay with her for minutes—perhaps hours—but when the time came, he was not the one to move away.

All at once, Mukuro sprang to life again, her arms shoving Hiei off of her and into the floor with a painful smack, and he bit down the surge of surprise and irritation as he looked up at her face.

She stared back at him, and then suddenly . . . She smiled.

He didn't know why but that smile stunned him, and he couldn't feel anything of the pain he should have felt anymore.

Then in the next second her confusion and curiosity took over. "What happened? How did we make it?"

"I don't know."

Mukuro stood shakily from the bed and glanced down the hidden passage, carefully stepping down its dark length until she found the room again, Hiei at her heels.

The cyborg was on his back, his metal body completely intact and more vulnerable than he had allowed them to see it when he was—alive? functioning?

She rolled him over, and it was then that the both of them saw the wire coming from his lower back, stretching some length until it attached to the wall.

That wire was the wire that Hiei had cut with his sword.

Mukuro laughed, softly. "You did it, Hiei. Whatever that wire did, its absence caught up with him."

—.—

After ensuring that all the robots had been deactivated and freeing all the slaves in the compound, Hiei and Mukuro set off in the direction of the fortress. The route back ended up taking four days to trek, a trip which was made slower by the fatigue they were already suffering. The silences were long and tense, the nights cold and restless. The both of them were still vigilant about being followed, paranoid despite all odds that they would be ambushed again—and in their current physical condition, that possibility was not one to be taken lightly.

When they finally reached the fortress, Kirin was the first to greet them, and he somewhat nervously informed Mukuro that some intruders had managed to sneak past the soldiers standing guard and were currently holding several lower-rank demons hostage in one of the larger training areas.

"How many are there?" she asked.

"Around ten."

"Why have you let them live for this long?" She sighed. Then, "Which training area?"

"The outdoor facility," he said, his answer punctuated with an apologetic nod, and Mukuro set off down the corridor.

Hiei sent Kirin a sideways sneer as he passed. "Imbecile."

By the time he and Mukuro had made their way through the fortress, Hiei was more than a little irritated. Kirin had not mentioned the number of soldiers being held hostage, but by the emptiness of the halls, it became clear that either that number was very large or all of Mukuro's men were hiding their faces out of shame. To Hiei, both possibilities seemed aggravatingly plausible.

Outside, chilly droplets of rain had begun to smatter the ground, and Hiei saw Mukuro shiver slightly in the too-large, tattered shirt she was still wearing. The training area was a small, temporary closed-in arena which was reassembled each time the bug vehicle relocated, and immediately upon stepping into it, Hiei heard laughter from behind a clump of trees a short distance away.

"Show yourselves!" he demanded, and the laughter only became more hysterical.

"You've caused quite an upset amongst my men," Mukuro said impatiently. "Why are you here and what do you want?"

"Don't tell me you two are it!" an abrasive, decidedly male voice said. "We've been waiting around here for three days to strike a deal with the bitch that leads these demons, but we had no idea you _were_ really just some smacked-up whore! A whore and her pet rat!"

"Sorry to be so disappointing," Mukuro replied.

"We want the giant bug," the male voice—assumedly the leader—continued. "Give it to us and your men won't die horrible gruesome deaths. Is that clear enough to you?"

Mukuro smiled. "Let's agree to make this quick, so we don't have to stare at each other's ugly faces."

"What?"

Hiei jerked what was left of his blade from its sheath and chided, "My sword is broken, so don't bother standing still. It won't make this any less painful for you."

The two of them whipped across the training ground at a speed faster than the ragtag group of would-be fortress thieves could comprehend, and Hiei lunged first for the irritating voice behind the trees with the intent of silencing it for good.

Several minutes, punches, and slashes later, Hiei and Mukuro had succeeded in dispatching the reasonably minuscule threat and stood staring at the group of newly-freed men, who seemed to gawk in confusion, admiration, or both.

Mukuro screwed up her face at them. "What are you looking at? Out of my sight!" she snapped, and they quickly scrambled off to their various destinations within the fortress.

As Mukuro heaved a sigh and rested her head in her metal hand, Hiei worked on wrenching the stub of his blade from a freshly slain corpse, and she watched him for a moment out of the corner of her eye before raising her head and walking lightly toward him, the wet ground sloshing under her bare feet. He looked up at her in an oblivious sort of way, acknowledging her but not expecting that she would place her hand so softly against his chest and press her mouth to his.

Hiei was so startled by the sudden affectionate gesture that he jerked his face away from Mukuro's, staring at her wide-eyed as the light drizzle falling down upon them evolved into a heavy rain. Looking at her face now, the reality of all that they had endured over the past week seemed incomprehensible to him.

They were alive. They had made it.

He let the remainder of his sword fall at his feet and closed whatever distance was left between them, sliding his arm around her neck and claiming her mouth with his.

* * *

><p>It's officially done (but cruise on over to the epilogue for more)! Just as a disclaimer, all the chapters in this fanfiction (and the title) were named after songs.<p>

See you next time,  
>Heidi &amp; Kia<p> 


	21. Epilogue

**Seven Days of Falling**

_epilogue_

* * *

><p>For several moments, they quietly reveled in the tenderness of the embrace, the rain pounding down upon them, until finally Mukuro pulled back slightly. "Let's go inside," she murmured.<p>

Together they returned to her private quarters, and she led him through a small door and into a room he had never seen before. He was not entirely dense, though he was unable to control himself as he set eyes upon the large cubicle-like device against one wall.

"And just what is that thing?" he asked.

"A shower."

"It looks like a piece of shit."

Mukuro shot him a warning glance, but it was half-hearted, as was the sneer he gave her in return. She reached into the contraption and twisted some sort of valve, and as a result, a stream of water from a device on the wall sprayed into the large basin below.

"We're going to clean ourselves off," Mukuro said decidedly, and Hiei was about to protest that idea when, without any warning whatsoever, she lifted her ragged shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor, leaving her entirely naked in front of him.

She stuck her hand under the stream, and Hiei finally followed her example and removed his own clothing while she stepped in.

Mukuro slicked her hair away from her face and allowed Hiei to join her, half-smirking as the hot water pelted him. "Feels good?"

"Hn," he answered.

She picked up the soap resting on a ledge nearby and coated herself with a layer of the stuff, then set it down and delicately rubbed it into her skin with both hands.

Bearing witness to her bathing ritual struck some strange chord inside Hiei. He had never made a habit of bathing indoors—usually he just found a river somewhere. A part of him felt confused at Mukuro's behavior—that she might regularly indulge in such a luxury—and even though they had washed together before, the knowledge that she was now actively inviting him to participate in this with her filled him with wonderment.

As she meticulously washed the dirt and blood away from each part of her body, Hiei found himself unable to do anything at all besides watch her in quiet curiosity, a heady anticipation filling his senses.

She rinsed, then turned to him expectantly. "It isn't hard," she said.

And then she began to touch him.

Her hands glided over his skin, and Hiei quivered. She lathered the soap over his chest and shoulders, then pulled him close and massaged his back. No one had ever touched him in such a way before, and as her lips skirted across his cheek, he gave a soft sigh, wondering if now she expected him to take over.

Hiei placed his hands on her hips, gently squeezing her in his grasp, and touched the tip of his nose to her jaw in a lazy sort of way.

He didn't want to wash himself. He didn't want her to stop.

After a moment, Mukuro pulled her head back, but just when Hiei thought the experience had ended, her hands were in his hair, and he uttered a curious grunt. "What are you doing?"

"Washing you," she replied.

He closed his eyes as her fingers worked in firm, circular motions across his scalp. The smell of the soap wasn't what he would describe as pleasant, but Hiei tolerated it for the singular experience of feeling her hands on him. When Mukuro eased him a few steps back so that he could rinse off in the warm water, he did not let go of her hips, desiring above all else to maintain this intimacy they now shared.

Hiei blinked water away from his eyes and pulled her more closely against him. "Make no mistake," he said, pressing his lips to the damp, delicate skin of her neck. "If you had let yourself die, I would have killed you."

* * *

><p>Mukuro smiled. "I'll try to avoid dying from now on," she said, reaching behind him to turn the shower off.<p>

She pulled her arms away and wrung out her hair, moving to step out of the shower, but Hiei's grip on her waist did not falter, and he turned them toward each other, this time stealing a kiss from her.

She gave in.

She simply had to.

Their entire journey back home had been riddled with anxiety and stress, and now that they were, for the most part, safe again, Mukuro was able to feel again. The two of them had not so much as touched one another in days, and with everything painful and confusing—and amazing—that had happened between them, the distance that they had during that time was unsettling. She had no idea what to do with it. She had never needed so much to feel reassured, to embrace that warm feeling. She was terrified it was gone, leaving only the pain, a hole in all that the two of them had tried to build together.

But that could not be so. Mukuro couldn't let that prove true. She had to know, somehow, that all of it wasn't just a happy dream.

And now, it wasn't.

It was real.

She knew it when she felt his warm body beside her in her bed, his arms wrapping her up in a firm and comforting embrace and his fingers buried in her damp hair, reminding her how grateful she was to be alive.


End file.
